Sounds like the situation is just plain confused sex-wise.

In the improved version of the post, I'll have to address those two alternatives. "Partner" seems to connote the transactionalization of the marriage relationship: as more like an enterprise or business, susceptible to cancellation as soon as it is deemed unprofitable or inadequately rewarding. Though many treat their marriages or relationships that way, it deprives the institution of its "magic" or its character of "eternal bond," and so on - whose recognition for gay couples marriage equality romantics want to celebrate.

Way back when, when I used to have real relationships with real people[*], what except for the absence of offspring might have once qualified as "common law" marriages, I also was attracted to the idea of referring to a "serious girlfriend" as "my woman." In some languages one word still serves for both "wife" and "woman" and another for both "husband" and "man." It appears that "husband" may have replaced "wer" in Old English (I'm approximating here pending closer research) in relation to historical changes, including the adoption or imposition of a more organized and hierarchical social structure, but I'm not confident in this position yet.

[just kidding here - I know youse guys are realish as anything or -body.]

Self-identified conservatives who respond in the way you describe probably deserve any number of accusations, including of bigotry. One temperamentally conservative response might be in favor of sexual restraint in general, regardless of personal preferences or inclinations: "Be gay - or straight - or celibate - or into horses - or whatever you are or aren't - there's no accounting for tastes and it takes all kinds - but please don't bother the rest of us with it." That this response is very much not something nominal conservatives are willing to rest on consistently - especially since self-consistency would also require restraint in the matter of requesting sexual restraint - goes to the problem of un-conservative conservatism that I've tried to address in the prior post and others. One result of bigoted overreaction - or over-expression - appears to have been the still ongoing rout of political conservatives on the civil-legal issue, and little or nothing achieved on their supposedly primary concern with supporting or saving traditional families or the institution of marriage. Part of the reason in turn goes to your statement below, and, again, to the prior topic: The identification of nominal conservatives with radical "anti-collectivism" and "anti-statism," a peculiarity of American political conservatism, hobbles any effort to put the administrative state on their side - say, via systematic enhanced support for childcare. It also points to a potential split within the conservative coalition, currently papered over with ludicrous symbolic initiatives, "War on Christmas" and the like, pandering to a religious sensibility that cannot be allowed to take any other form.