I took a few days, too.
Your first sentence is incorrect. Gay couples hardly shock me. My shock was (and thanks to Scott, I freely admit I may have misread the quote) that anyone would consider a gay couple a normal couple. Normal in the sense that homosexuality is the logical outcome of the evolutionary processes that lead to sexual dimorphism. I wonder if it would still shock the senses around here if instead of saying a gay couple was "a couple that deviates from the norm" or the shortened version "deviant couple", I had instead referred to the gay couple as an atypical couple. I honestly still do not personally distinguish meaning between the phrases "deviant behavior" and "atypical behavior" but I know I am in the minority (especially now). If "atypical" is acceptable, I fail to see the controversy in claiming an atypical couple is not a normal (read: typical) couple. YMMV.
Box (with some help from Rand) made me realize something that had eluded my notice. I actually do ascribe some negative connotation to the word "abnormal." I realized this in thinking about how I had inadvertently offended box. I would not personally ever refer to a mixed race couple as an "abnormal" couple (perhaps at least partly because you don't have to go back more than a handful of generations in my own family tree to find a mixed race marriage). Assuming Rand's conjecture that most married couples are of the same race, I might say (with no malice) that the races of the couple deviate from the norm. But I would never say they are an abnormal couple. Technically that might be accurate but I discovered that in my mind "abnormal" somehow contains a tinge of "defective" that I view as wholly inappropriate when describing mixed race couples.
So, thanks for that.
Edit: I actually typed since instead of sense. Sheesh.
