For me, if someone refers to my male (same-sex) spouse as my "partner," it implies that they are relegating my homosexual relationship to a sterile business relationship. In most cases, they aren't similarly going to insist that heterosexual couples refer to one another as "partner" -- it's accepted that straight married couples are one another's "husbands" or "wives," whereas I (as a gay man) am supposedly supposed to be grateful that they are "tolerating" me by acknowledging my spouse as a "partner" at all.