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I think it's part of a larger reframing of the conversation. You're right, it used to be that queer and weird were synonymous, but why should it be?
Queer should be normal. Trans should be normal. Black and Brown and Asian and Native should all be normal. Fucked up right wing ideologies should not be normal.
And the only way we get there is by acting like we already are. You reframe the narrative. You move "normal" to where it should be instead of where it is. You bring all the people who used to be the "weirdos" and outsiders into the tent, and you leave the bigoted xenophobes standing outside in the rain.
Queer is the new normal. Bigot is the new weird. That's a world I'm down for living in.
This I can almost get behind, except that “weird” has a lot of queer and diverse and non-white connotations/baggage that can’t be ignored.
A white-on-the-inside coconut may not see it immediately if she was raised in a California context. That word didn’t just fall out of a tree, and it exists within the context of all the uses that came before hers.
Sure, we can reframe what behavior is acceptable vs not, but “weird” does not mean and has never meant “unacceptable”. Weird Al is generally considered to be acceptable. “That’s weird” is usually quoted as the fundamental driving statement of advances in science. Rejecting weirdness is fundamentally antithetical to progress, and carries with it baggage of rejecting solid portions of the democratic party’s base.
I think there's more than enough specific context to how the term is being used here that I feel confident in saying the risks you're imagining don't really exist.
I'm openly bisexual and married to a trans woman, and also a massive nerd, and I really don't feel threatened by this. Words can have different meanings depending on their context. Gay can mean homosexual, and gay can also mean happy. Idiot can be a term of abuse or a term of affection. Weird can be cool, or it can be creepy. Language is just like that.