A translation problem

Last week, in response to a question from our French teacher about the day's events, I had to explain the concept of a Men's Group.  "Every Wednesday morning from 6-8," I said, "we meet at a cafe to catch up, read the Bible together, encourage and pray for one another," though my French version wasn't quite that smooth : )  This concept was utterly foreign to our teacher, who proceeded to ask lots of questions about the nature of the group.  (The idea that we meet in a public place seemed to be the main problem--religion is supposed to be practiced in private!)

When we finished answering her questions, to our surprise, she said: "You know, using the name 'Men's Group' has a certain connotation in French that the group is for gay men.  You should probably say 'Group of [male] Friends' instead."  We're still at the anecdotal stage, but the second native French speaker we asked about this confirmed the connotation.  It appears that my word-for-word translation added meaning I hadn't intended!  So now I don't tell people that the "Groupe d'Hommes" meets on Wednesday mornings.  Instead, it's the "Groupe d'Amis."