Importantly, these perceptions of victimhood were automatic and effortless, not belabored rationalizations. Participants placed under a tight time limit were actually more likely to perceive a victim than those with ample time.

These perceptions of harm were powerful enough to influence similar judgments in unrelated contexts: The more immoral people saw a given act to be, the more they saw pain in minor injuries (e.g., hitting your head, cutting your finger) and the more they detected suffering in ambiguous facial expressions.

The technical name for this psychological link between judgments of immorality and perceptions of harm is “dyadic completion.” Whether liberal or conservative, people understand immorality though a universal template — a dyad of perpetrator and victim. Most immoral acts have a “complete” dyad, such as murder (murderer and murdered), theft (thief and thieved) and abuse (abuser and abused). But with many morally controversial acts, such as those involving adult pornography, prostitution, drugs or homosexuality, the victims seem less obvious or absent altogether.

When we encounter such an “incomplete” dyad, we tend to slot in a victim. Such victims can be friends, family, future generations or the soul of the perpetrator. Very often they are children, because of their vulnerability and sensitivity to suffering. It is no accident that moralists of all kinds beseech others to “think of the children.”

Of course, the phenomenon of dyadic completion does not mean that homosexuality (or anything else that is morally controversial) causes actual harm. What it does mean is that the notion of “harmless wrongs” or “victimless crimes” is more complicated that you might think. Although logically possible, victimless crimes are psychologically rare. Perceptually speaking, if you see something as wrong, you almost certainly see it as harmful. The absence of victims occurs only in the absence of immorality.