Question

With God’s help,
Hello, 
I looked at the chapter on the attitude toward homosexuals and homosexuality that the Rabbi wrote in his book Walking Among the Standing, and in conclusion the Rabbi wrote that one can say that with regard to people who “are not ordinary people” in terms of their sexual inclination, the prohibition of male homosexual intercourse was not stated. These words are extremely puzzling, for in Sanhedrin 75a it says: “Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: There was an incident involving a certain man who set his eyes upon a certain woman, and his heart was filled with lust. They came and asked the doctors, and they said: He has no cure until she has intercourse with him. The Sages said: Let him die, and she may not have intercourse with him. Let her stand naked before him? Let him die, and she may not stand naked before him. Let her converse with him from behind a fence? Let him die, and she may not converse with him from behind a fence.” 
 
And Maimonides’ view, in the topic of sanctifying God’s name in the chapter of the “stubborn and rebellious son” in Sanhedrin, really distinguishes between coercion and healing oneself, for he wrote in Laws of the Foundations of the Torah (5:6): “Just as they spoke regarding cases of coercion, so too they spoke regarding illness. How so? One who is sick and near death, and the doctors say that his cure depends on a certain thing involving prohibitions of the Torah—one may do so and be healed through any prohibition in the Torah in a life-threatening situation, except for idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed, for even in a life-threatening situation one may not be healed through them. And if he transgressed and was healed, the religious court punishes him with the punishment appropriate to him.“
And from this the later authorities proved, among them the Minchat Chinukh (commandment 296) and Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky of blessed memory (cited in Rabbi Shmuel’s lectures on Sanhedrin, vol. 2, pp. 335-339), that Maimonides holds that coercion is different from healing oneself, since in healing oneself it is a willing transgression, whereas “let him be killed rather than transgress” applies in coercion. And the Chazon Ish indeed wondered about this, since in the end he is still coerced by his illness. It seems possible to explain Maimonides’ view by saying that the difference is a psychological one—when a group of people comes and tells a person that if he does not perform an action they will beat him, he performs it and feels very angry. By contrast, when a person is brought to a decision on his own initiative to perform a certain action, because he himself understands that under the circumstances this is his decision and his “sovereignty” over his own mind has not been violated, he will perform the action and be less angry, even though in practice the result is the same. And it seems to me that in the past I saw a study that proved something very similar regarding bed choice among children in Professor Cialdini’s book Influence: Science and Practice (it is not in front of me now, so I cannot refer you to the exact place there). 
And one cannot answer that in Sanhedrin 26b we say that one suspected regarding sexual prohibitions is fit to testify about a woman, and Tosafot above on 9b in the topic where “we split” brought this and wrote (s.v. “If willingly, he is wicked”): One suspected regarding sexual prohibitions is fit for testimony. Rashi explained that this is not where there are witnesses that he actually had relations with a forbidden woman, but rather that he is overly familiar with forbidden relations and secludes himself with them. And that which it says, “forty lashes on his shoulders and still fit,” is because they administer lashes for seclusion with all forbidden women except a married woman, where lashes are given for having a bad reputation. Alternatively, there he is fit because his inclination overpowers him so much that he is considered like one under compulsion, but with regard to being mounted [in homosexual intercourse], his inclination does not overpower him so much. And from this one might want to infer that one whose inclination overpowers him is considered coerced and the Merciful One exempts him (and I intentionally ignored the latter part of their words, since I know that the Rabbi tends to dispute everyone when it comes to factual disputes), for he is certainly considered wicked and liable to death; rather, they wrote only that for testimony he is considered like one under compulsion. And we have already found cases where the Torah said that for a certain matter something is treated as what it is not generally. See the novellae of Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik on Temurah 10, where he writes that for certain matters, such as the intent of a fetus, it is considered like its mother’s thigh even according to the view that a fetus is not its mother’s thigh (unfortunately the book is not in front of me now because of my exile from the yeshiva due to the intersession break). 
And seemingly this proves the point against the Rabbi’s reasoning, and I would be happy to hear his response. 
With the blessing of a fine kvittel and a happy holiday, 
A student of the holy Ponevezh Yeshiva.