>I don't believe there is a difference in the minds of people between the two matters! Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you: do you think that if you were to

>I don't believe there is a difference in the minds of people between the two matters! Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you: do you think that if you were to take a representative sample of the population of a Western European country or the US, they'd be just as opposed to regulating fear caused by gay people having sex in private and fear caused by someone coming up to a Jewish person and saying that all Jews should be kicked in the face? >but one fear is the same as another fear. From what perspective? If it's a subjective perspective, we'd have to turn to psychological studies. If it's an objective perspective, there's no way of knowing that at all, since fear is inherently subjective. >I think there is a relative and vital material difference, it just cannot be reduced to a quality of the fear in itself. I agree, but this is precisely the problem with the harm principle. You can overload 'harm' with (what I consider to be) a silly harm, such as causing fear of the 'gay agenda' because gay people have sex in private, and a more serious harm, causing fear of being punched in the face. My point is only this: the idea that only contact, physical harms are in the domain of society's lawmakers is highly suspect. If lawmakers are granted the power to regulate mental harms (and in some cases they already are in most countries including the U.S.), we can have a discussion (or at least a preference, if not all parties can come to a rational well-grounded principle) on which of those harms can be regulated - and in my view, in most Western societies, the people would be much more likely to say that the Jewish face punching situation is much more serious or deserving of regulation than the gay agenda situation.