I have a pet theory that the reason certain men are homophobic is because they're terrified that another man is looking at them the same way they look at women.
Homophobia arises from seeing homosexuality as a threat to your heterosexuality. The LGBT people are coming after your coveted "straight" status and try to infect you with the "gay" virus which makes it harder to attract a woman.
Basically it's the male equivalent of being "deflowered".
Atypical, non-standard, or unconventional are more neutral in tone, so given your desire for a non-subjective word I'd recommend these instead.
I mean why do people even post something like that? It takes 2 seconds to look up the definition of abnormal. It's it really not knowing, it's is it (what I believe) trying to sneak in their moral judgements behind a veneer of supposed "neutrality"?
> Abnormal - deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying.
Yes, that's precisely what it is. Moral judgements based on outdated ("conservative", especially clerical) understandings of the world, wrapped in some delusional sense of "objectivity". Only the scientifically and philosophically illiterate fall for it. In German, we call it Bauernfängerei (swizzling, duping; lit. "pawn catching").
If the topic is about whether homosexuality is non-normative and heterosexuality is normative (with the actual, common meanings of the words), we can have a philosophical discussion on that.
Of course, it's an unprovable conjecture - but it sure would explain a few things.
You fall into the same trap ("non-standard", "atypical"); you just stepped on the euphemism treadmill.
This is an abjectly silly thing to say, and people who push back on it are not gaslighting. Homosexuality occurs naturally and it's not even rare - it's far more common than red hair, for example.
Calling something like that "abnormal" isn't in the domain of fact, it's purely a side-effect of what you label "normal".