Being gay is harmful to society.

"Yes, that is a cause, and that cause was due to a combination of some event or events in their life and the influence this had on their behavior as controlled by their trait makeup. This causal chain can continue back all the way back to the planck epoch if desired. There are primary causes, direct causes, root causes, etc. The definition of harm does not constrain itself and thus all causes have to be accepted." This contradicts itself. First you say that we don't know what the cause is because there could be many, then you say we have to accept all of causes? This makes no sense. There can be more than one contributing cause, but you've just stated that we have no idea what they are, so we assume every possible cause is a cause? So, if a patient is dying from an unknown illness, we assume he has all possible illnesses and treat him for all of them? No, because some of the treatments could hurt the patient further. "The argument fails even to be self-consistent, there are those who are gay and who lash out at gays because of self-loathing, denying that they are gay. Now again, of course you can take the causal chain one step further back and determine why they hate being gay, this can continue forever." You are misunderstanding the principal I am trying to explain to you. It doesn't matter where, when, or how they started to hate being gay. What matters is that they somehow developed a belief that being gay is bad, and this causes their emotional harm. It is not that they are gay, it is not what causes them to hate being gay, it is just the belief that being gay is bad which causes self-hate and self-harm. "Causality is a chain of consequences, and what is a consequence, an action which happens as a result of a set of conditions[1]. If someone is not gay then by definition they can not suffer a consequence of harm from being gay (they do not have that condition and thus can not have a consequence of it). However if they are gay then that is a condition, they do have it, and it has the probability of making the person come to injury and thus it fits the above definition." I don't dispute this. You missed the point. If someone punches me in the face, what caused me physical harm? Was it that I stole the puncher's boyfriend yesterday? Maybe that caused the punch, but it was the punch itself that did me physical harm. The belief that gayness is bad is the punch. As for your whole thing about us in the bar: cool story bro, that has nothing to do with the debate because you misunderstand my logic. "Why stop there, why not find out what makes them anti-gay and call that the cause? What about if they were raped by a homosexual and that made them anti-gay, would you then also not call gay or would you argue that there was something that made the gay rapist a rapist and then find out the cause of that cause, etc. ." By your logic here, you say there is no way to find the cause. If we cannot absolutely say that someone being gay is causing the harm, then the resolution is negated. Thanks for refuting your own side bro. "Harm is defined in the above as not only causing injury but also the potential, being legally classified has certain benefits, you really are not aware of any of them and wish to actually contend that?" I was referring only to your scenario where you said a gay person was hurt by a negative comment about them being gay. You took that out of context.