I need a few more verses like this in my arsenal. I don't want people citing religious texts at me for how to live my life, Ive read like 5% of the/a christian bible and zero of the others. I don't agree as a concept, might as well be quoting star wars at me, but if they insist on fighting with the book its nice to have ways to win with the book.

Of course it was. Of course Christianity took a line intended to protect children from abuse and "mistranslated" it to be homophobic.

Iirc, the hebrew word that gets translated to 'lay' is also a pretty suspect translation. Its only other usage in the OT (and our only other known context for it) is to describe a man pursuing his wife's servant, and contextually, is more likely to mean 'molest' or 'rape' than to describe consensual sex.

The 2 words translated to 'man' are also different- the first being 'ish' the second being 'zachar'

While both can generally refer to anyone male, ish can be used in the context of 'anyone', or 'husband/ man of the house', whereas Zachar is often used biblically to refer to young males, and /or subordinates.

So put together, this passage is likely 'nobody should be molesting boys,' or 'a master shouldn't rape his servants or children'

A lot of scholars point out that homosexuality wasn't really a concept in the ancient world. Neither was marriage for love or anything other than a means to perpetuate genes and familial property. But what was very much a concept was machismo. Being a "bottom" (in different terms back then) was considered degrading and "womanly," and that was typically the issue at hand, according to many scholars, such as DanMcClellan, Robert Alter, and Jerome Walsh.

Why do you practice a religion that requires any practicioner to interpret these abhorrent texts in their own manner? It just leaves a lot of room to interpret anything the wrong way. And unsurprisingly, some people will interpret this in a homophobic way, and honestly, I can't blame them. The texts themselves are just wrong and shouldn't be preached.

Does the majority of your congregation share your opinion as well?

I interpret it as a mid fantasy book. The epilogue is fucking boring as hell.

And translation issues. Words and meaning can change a lot when something is translated. Leviticus went from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English (and most other modern languages of course).

I believe that line was originally written as “man shall not lie with boys” and is about pedophilia, not homosexuality.

Masturbation is incest, i die on that hill

however the Bible says that being gay is normal and cool.

with a King having a gay lover and writing poetry that says "his love was greater than any woman". and he's still considered one of the greatest kings in the bible.

King David, putting the Bi in Bible

The joke is that the bible says they should be stoned as in having stones thrown at them, not the other meaning.

Anyway, the people of biblical times didn't have a concept of homosexuality so it doesn't make sense to say they condemned it. They condemned male same sex activities as much as wearing clothes of different materials and many Christians come to the conclusion that both is fine. But if you have hatred in your heart, you will skip "love your neighbor" and select the few passages that can be interpreted hatefully.