To be honest it was confusing as hell because they said partner and his name is Miranda, more commonly a girls name. Seriously, boyfriend or husband, partner just sounds like some live in person or like you said business related.

I'm also amused by just how hard these reporters seem to even avoid pronouns or other language that would indicate his gender. Strikes me as really really odd.

Yep, hands up, took me a while too.

I wonder if the media and/or government(s) were bending over backwards to make damn sure no one could be accused of homophobia. Dunno about the US, but in the UK, if there were the slightest smell of homophobia, a whole new can of worms would have been opened. The gay rights folk would have, rightly IMHO, exploded, with quite a lot of public support. Oddly, I reckon if this had been some how made a gay issue, the government would have been in a lot more trouble. Last thing this UK government in particular wants is any more controversy over gay rights issues. Lining it to the spying would be both explosive, and kinda 1960's traditional!!!

Or perhaps some credit is due in that some parts of the media have simply grown up, and the gay part really is a non issue. Which would be a good thing.

Even the Daily Mail's coverage was surprisingly good (I looked at it explicitly expecting a total hatchet job).

You know they government has fucked this up when even the Daily Mail writes an article that sympathetic about terror law abuses directed at a gay couple closely linked to the Guardian.

While I'd love to think the media has grown up, the past few years haven't given me much hope. :)

I'm not British but I lived in London for two years and I believe this is the way the British say "significant other." Its pretty forward thinking actually, because they use it for all of the options and therefore take the stigma out of same-sex couples using it to refer to themselves.

It is, however, far more commonly used when referring to same-sex couples.

No, it's not.

David Miranda.

Hey @drivebyacct2 you're account is dead just FYI.

He's been told more times than I can count at this point. I think he's decided that he doesn't care.

Oh ok.

drivebyacct2 you are hellbanned.

>Partner is the only gender neutral way of expressing this thought

Not really. Significant other does the job fine and cannot be confused with a business partner.

In the UK, 'partner' is a spouse. You need to say 'business partner' if you want to avoid the confusion.

Not really. Before I was able to call her my wife, a lot of people thought I was gay when I referred to my long-term girlfriend as my partner.

I deliberately leave that question unanswered when I'm speaking to groups I don't know personally (such as HN). When I'm talking about my significant other, I refer to them as my significant other. Not my boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband. In this day and age, that really only matters when you're speaking about legal rights as recognized by the state. The gender or legal status of the person I love doesn't generally make one bit of difference.

On the other hand, my dad is a business owner and I've had people assume he was gay when I referred to his co-owner as "his partner, Jeff".

...wait, it wasn't a professional "partner"? I was under impression that the "partner" was in a professional sense throughout the article.

It wasn't: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald#Personal_life

Nope, they are boyfriends and live together (in Brazil).

The thing is: It doesn't matter at all. And it shouldn't. It will probably be used to create distraction etc. again.

It does in this sense: people were talking about governments going after families. I thought this was just the now-typical bullshit overstatement that I've gotten used to seeing, so I wrote off all the criticism along that line as crackpot, because I assumed Miranda was just another journalist who happened to work directly with Greenwald a lot.

This angle of understanding is now clearly incorrect.

Now I have to go and look up whether or not Miranda is a Guardian reporter, for instance, because that's an assumption I made that may not be true after all.