This may seem low in priority, but I use this feature all the time. The VIM binaries can be linked so that when the link is used to launch vim, you automatically see the opened file as "Read-only". The links are as follows: vim -> view, gvim -> gview, and cvim -> cview.
view and rview exist under RH7.0. Unable to verify gvim/gview cvim/cview. Please try the latest version and if the problem exists for the gvim/cvim re-open this bug report.
gview and gex are added in 6.0-0.21.