Gay civil partners should resist pressure to ‘upgrade’ to marriage

Apparently I’ve proposed to my civil partner. He claims that on BBC Radio 2, on the Jeremy Vine show (he thinks it was the JV show) I expressed myself in terms which presumed his prior acceptance. I can’t remember a thing about it — on live radio one does tend to throw these thoughts out heedlessly — but my partner swears I said, ‘Oh yes, well I suppose we’ll have to get an upgrade.’ He found this a graceless way of popping the question, and has forbidden me from using the term ‘upgrade’ again.

Ah well. But in that case, if not ‘upgrade’, what shall we call it? ‘Conversion’ appears to be the word gaining ground among gay friends, an expression carrying (for me) stronger associations with religion or loft-improvement than with the married state, but an expression which will have to do, not least because it’s technically quite accurate: for civil partners, the marriage conversions that should start taking place by next summer will not require a new civil ceremony, but will be more like a routine planning application guaranteed to go through on the nod.