Is a stupid typo in the Bible the reason for the “Don’t Say Gay” nonsense we’re dealing with today?

No matter how far society progresses toward equal rights and protections for the LGBTQ community, it seems there will always be a vocal group of Christian fundamentalists who want to remind us that the Bible says homosexuality is a sin.

It’s easy to see how that literal reading of the Bible has influenced conservative ideology and the culture at large, as its been weaponized against queer people again and again. From the moral panic in the ’80s around the AIDS crisis, to the modern-day wave of “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, the foundational religious text has been used to justify decades of anti-LGBTQ fear and hatred from the political right.

But, what if the inclusion of the word “homosexuality” in the Bible was a mistake—a simple matter of human error?

That question is at the core of a controversial new documentary called 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture, which alleges that a minor accident in translation is responsible for much of the vehement homophobia that’s plagued our culture for so long, including during this year’s midterm elections season, where we saw Republicans demonize drag queens, accuse LGBTQ people of being “groomers”, and call for the banning of queer books.

How about we take this to the next level?

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Directed by Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, the journalistic doc points out that the word “homosexuality” first appeared in the Bible in 1946, after a committee had gathered to provide an updated translation of the book from Greek to English. But, as a group of experts have deduced over decades of research, the word’s use was a mistranslation of the original text.

The verse in question—1 Corinthians 6:9-10—is widely recognized as follows: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”

However, as 1946 outlines, “homosexuality” was an incorrect misinterpretation and amalgamation of two different Greek words. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Roggio provides further clarity:

“We’re talking about a word, a medical term that has a connotation of a group of people that have an orientation, as opposed to what the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts are referring to, which is an aggressor, somebody who was an abuser—somebody who has abused someone else, and there is a victim on the other side. It’s a very different connotation.”

Related: Dear Religious Right: Stop using The Bible as a weapon of homophobia

As the documentary delves into the evidence, it also comes across an old letter to the translation committee, which pointed out the error and even warned, “misinformed and misguided people may use the [mistranslation] as a sacred weapon.” Talk about foresight! As the time, the committee recognized their mistake, and even took steps to correct it, but in many ways, the damage was already done.

“The domino had already fallen,” scholar Dr. Ed Oxford says in 1946. “And that word followed through to all of the other mainline translations that we have today… I started weeping because I was thinking about all the damage that had been done over the last 60 years.”

Though it won’t premiere until this weekend at the DOC NYC festival, 1946 has, unsurprisingly, already become a flashpoint, with many attacking its legitimacy and attempting to debunk its claims. As The Daily Beast notes, its director has received threats, there are viral social media posts decrying the film, and there’s even a book that was published refuting the evidence—all before anyone has seen it.

“The opposition is quite vocal about our film, trying to debunk it because they’re afraid,” Roggio says, acknowledging how shocking her work will be to many, Christian or otherwise. “We’re literally unmooring them and pulling the anchors out from underneath.”

“We’ve been hit by the conservative audience,” she continues. “We’ve been hit by the atheist audience. We’ve been hit by LGBTQ people who have been hurt by the church and who have now left the church, because they feel that we are subscribing to religious supremacy by even playing along in this dialogue.”

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And while outrage was expected, Roggio and her filmmaking team maintain their purpose was not to attack the Bible, but to point out a very real issue of mistranslation—a minute one that’s nevertheless had an outsized impact on our world.

“Our movie is more than just theology. It’s history. It’s society. It’s politics. It’s law. It’s oppression. It’s how, again, these words have meaning. We as a group of people have had to negotiate the text. A group of people over time have had to pick and choose which verses stand out, which verses we follow—which verses play out in our land and our law. To really be an honest reader of Christian scripture, we have to find a way where we’re not oppressing people, where we’ve contextualized the text—we understand where it comes from and how it impacted a group of people.”

1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture premieres November 12 at the DOC NYC Festival—you can find festival information here, and more about the documentary on its official website.