You're correct that that is what I was saying. If you have a different way of looking at it, that you can back up logically, I'd be interested in hearing it.
As I understand your usual test for the soundness of an interpretation, it involves asking the question "Why didn't they just write it the way that you're interpreting it?" So, I guess the question for you would be: If the Fourteenth Amendment was only intended to limit the power of state judges and was not intended to limit the powers of the state legislatures, why couldn't they have just said so?
In other words, I suspect that you for some reason believe that your interpretive process is somehow different than the interpretive processes used by others. You are critical of the way in which others have interpreted the due process clause to "incorporate" the Bill of Rights because you see these people as improperly adding meaning to the Amendment that the draftsmen did not express. But your interpretation is no different in that regard. By exempting state legislatures from the scope of the Amendment, you too are adding meaning that the draftsmen did not express.
You cannot escape the need to provide some meaning to the Constitution's words. You can only choose between alternative meanings.