Oh, dear. Yes, I think "Bible thumper" is pejorative.
So, we're dealing with Hebrew here, a language much more closely related to Arabic than any other widely spoken language. It's decidedly
not Indo-Euro.
One thing I've struggled most with learning Japanese (another very-not-Indo-Euro language) is that way verbs match up to situations are not at all the same. Thus, it's impossible to come up with good translations for verbs in isolation. I suspect this happens whenever you have two unrelated languages.
Say the phone is ringing and interrupting me and I'm a little irked. I might mumble to myself:
hai, hai, ima deru kara machi na yo - Hold your horses, I'm coming. The verbs in their dictionary forms are
deru and
matsu which respectively mean "to emerge" and "to await."
My Hebrew is non-existent. But, I can google up an
interlinear text and play with that. In this case, the verb in question is
w'nëd'äh, dictionary form
yada`, usually glossed (drumroll, please) "to know."
The context implies that whatever the Sodomites have in mind is awfully violent, and that Lot is protecting the malakim from them. I'd consider English "to rape" or "to take care of" depending on what fits the rest of the translation.
I suspect "to have sex with" doesn't adequately convey the sense of the original text to many readers. But, I'm not a Hebrew scholar nor Biblical translator, just a language nerd with an interlinear text and my opinions.