In this verse,we see that both shall die. Why would the victim be punished of death if it were rape? Why would the victim of a homosexual rape be considered to have done an abomination? Surely the victim should be payed and allowed to marry the rapist just like in 22:28-29, wouldn't you think?
I think this is one of a number of places where there is an intersection between the phrasing in Torah and the ways in which our ancestors who wrote down the Torah were the products of their societies and cultural times.
We have the mitzvot the way the nevi'im who assembled the Torah wrote them, and we cannot change how they were written, but I think that part of the purpose of
torah sheb'al peh is to offer us the opportunity, via reinterpretation and re-understanding, of correcting for what our ancestors were unable to write into the
pshat of
torah she'bichtav because of their limitations in comprehension.
The Divine element in Torah, I think, shows itself in that Torah has the flexibility and the limitless depth of potential for finding justice and moral teachings, even when the
pshat doesn't present or even reflect them.
When Our Rabbis look at things like
ayin tachat ayin, or
ben sorer u'moreh, or when Hillel institutes
prozbul, or sets
kinyan for
kiddushin at
shaveh pruta, they demonstrate for us that when we interpret Torah, we must go into doing so with an interpretive agenda of ensuring that Torah makes us a just and fair life, where those who are good and defenseless are protected and given place.
To interpret the two verses in Vayikra as a blanket ban on homosexuality creates cruelty, suffering, and sorrow, and makes Torah into a thing of oppression on around ten percent of the Jewish People-- just as much as it would be oppressive if we put out people's eyes, or stoned our children for being rebellious, or restricted marriage to only the wealthy, or insisted that it was more important to hold by the
pshat of
shmittah than to have a functioning economy.
So whether it's looking at interpreting these verses as a ban on male rape, or as a ban on male homosexual acts in the context of
avodah zarah, or whether we go by some other interpretation, or we simply refuse to make practical halachah from them until a suitable interpretation has been found-- all of these options stem from a willingness to adhere to the overarching principles Our Rabbis have shown in their more radical interpretations, and those they have taught us, like
va-chai bahem l'vo lamut bahem, or even
eit la'asot l'Hashem. It's about doing our best to ensure Torah is an instrument of
kedushah.
Once one dispenses with the idea that what Hashem wants of us is a blanket ban on homosexuality-- that whatever those verses mean, it must be something else, because that meaning is impossible to reconcile with a God who gave us Torah to help us make a moral and ethical society-- it then makes sense that we treat homosexual relationships in essentially the same way we treat heterosexual relationships, that we do our best to ensure that all relationships have the potential for sanctification, for everyone who has the commitment and the desire to have the chance to create a
bayit ne'eman b'yisrael.