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That is eactly the problem. The GM shouldn't be imposing these penalties. The player should be playing these penalties!!!
if you have a 7 in a stat, you should be distinctly incapable in all things that stat, it would be just as central to who and what you are as your greatest strengths.
But when a player wants to pick a 7 in a stat that they then try to pretend doesn't exist... that is just a min/maxer. They have no interest in making an interesting character; they just wanted to do 1 more point of damage.
That is lame.
You are essentially forcing your own vision of what stat <10 means onto your players with little to no mechanical support for your decision. That is fine. It's called a house rule and you surely can add any house rule to your game you wish, regardless of how nonsensical it may be. However, you should realize that you are house ruling things, and that your position is not supported by the rules. Namely, a simple -2 penalty from a 7 stat does not come anywhere close to the mechanical equivalent of 'distinctly incapable'.
I suggest you do one of two things to avoid needlessly punishing your players and pissing them off:
Create a house rule that modeling your vision of low ability scores and give mechanical support to your arbitrary limitation. Double the penalties. Increase the time it takes for skill checks on that stat. I'm sure you have some ideas to rationalize your arbitrary limitation. Pull from those. However, run your arbitrary house rule by your players first and let them chime in whether or not they want to play with the additional rules. (Personally, I find any rule that limit the player's creativity with their own character is a really good way to have your players lose interest, but YMMV).
Or, let go of such arbitrary limitations and allow yourself the flexibility to acknowledge that there is a wide range of human intelligence, common sense and ability that cannot be exactly simulated with discreet stat scores. People with low stat scores can mechanically achieve easy DC skill checks in skills dependent on the dumped score. For instance, people with low intelligence are able to type and write complete sentences all the time (DC 5), rarely resulting in a complete fail despite their low Intelligence. You needn't look much farther than this thread to find copious evidence.