Just wanted to say "right on" to FoundAndLost1 and silent_enigma. I was raised as an evangelical, Southern Baptist Christian and have read the entire bible. I was raped at aged 15 by other 'Christian' boys. Naturally, I have a strong interest in the bible's take on rape.
First, someone accused the original poster of taking the verse out of context. So let me apply the right context. This verse comes from the written Torah, the inerrant set of laws given to the Jews (the ethnic group God loves best) to be followed for all time. These laws are stated by God to be complete and inerrant and never requiring addition, deletion, or change. These laws were given directly to Moses, who made no alterations. Orthodox Jews and Christian Fundamentalists still follow the Torah.
Second, some Christians decide to ignore the teachings of the old testament, but how does that make any sense? Either God is omniscient (meaning the laws He gave in the Torah must be inerrant) or he isn't omniscient (meaning He realized later that the laws were errant). As a Christian, you must believe God is omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent, as these are the critical definitions of God-ness. So, Anastasia, you can't claim to be Christian and then choose portions of the bible to declaim or rationalize as only "true for the times."
Now to the brutal rape I experienced at the hands of several good Christian boys. Although it has been 24 years since this happened to me, I am not free from it a single day of my life. I have nightmares, difficulty with intimacy, and sometimes overwhelming fear. This continues to be a HUGE factor in my suicidal tendencies. Rape is absolutely horrific. Just horrific.
All I can say is I am EXTREMELY GRATEFUL that I am not forced to lay in the same bed with my brutal attackers every night. I imagine the poor women who's fathers made them marry their rapists suffered TREMENDOUSLY, Anastasia, and you have no right to rationalize that they were so much better off to have their reputation 'saved' by the very man who treated them so violently! It is simply absurd! Ask any woman (or man) trapped in an ongoing, violent abusive relationship if you simply can't grasp this. You just aren't really accepting the fact that forcing a young woman back to her rapist should have been construed by God as a SIN. Sadly, God doesn't see it this way, which makes me wonder why.
The real reason for this Jewish/Christian law is that the girl's father would otherwise have been expected to provide food and shelter for his daughter, possibly for the rest of her life, if she didn't marry. Fathers of the time (and some even today) valued their daughters very little and couldn't be bothered to think of their well-being. It was far easier for the selfish father to hand over his daughter to her brutal rapist than it was for him to continue to support her. Plus, fathers of the time (and some today) were much more interested in their own reputations, and an unmarried daughter was thought to embarrass the father (again, sadly still true in some families today).
So, obviously, I completely reject God's point of view, and happily left the church in which I was raised. I'd like to think that *no one* would continue to defend this bible verse as somehow fair and just. It isn't. This verse about rape (and a few others) are what really helped me understand that either God is invented by humans, who then write their own viewpoints as 'sacred texts,' or God is just plain sadistic and mean.
I accept the former, and it has been absolutely LIBERATING! As a Christian or Jew or Muslim (the People of the Book), you aren't allowed to use your own intelligence and moral reasoning, but as an Atheist, I get to do this all the time! Try it, Anastasia! You might find yourself to be very smart and capable of making moral decisions, even up to the point of saying, "No way an omnibenevolent God would force a rape victim back to her brutalizer. Rather, an omnibenevolent God would give a law to Moses that said a rape victim shouldn't be stigmatized and then make it so through His omnipotence."