Well there's not necessarily a negative connotation with abnormal either. We could say that someone who is extremely smart is abnormal.

I think the main issue is people get too hung up on the terminology. It's a social failing I think that happens when society runs out of real problems. Personally I've never taken offense at the word straight even if I personally don't really like it. I'm not going to derail a conversation with stupid power games when we all know what we mean.

It's like that old George Carlin bit on "soft language", though I think a lot of it is just done due to people really having no clue on how to fix problems and so instead they pretend that words are magic and by using less nasty language that somehow fixes the problem. Don't say that the kid is retarded, say that the kid is "specially abled", which is funny because both terms are just bearing around the bush to try to sanitize the fact the kid is slow. Sad reality but what's wrong with just accepting that?