Trying to understand codemonkey, I believe they agrees there’s no justification. What they mean is that once a verbal fight started, tempers could have flared, and violence was inevitable, but not acceptable.
That said, I agree the optics are very bad, and more importantly, society should start from the default position of first assessing if a hate crime happened.
First thing should be “were these folks targeted based on their orientation?”
After that is thoroughly vetted, only then can it be considered “did a bunch of folks get heated in a shake shack after the customers were firmly but non discriminatorily told to knock it off?”
Edit if a reader thinks I took a side other than “hate crime bad, determine hate crime FIRST” with this comment you really need to think again.