Biden sees 'inevitability' for gay marriage

Vice President Joseph Biden said in a television interview Friday that “there’s an inevitability for a national consensus on gay marriage.”

The vice president, who backs civil unions but not same-sex marriage, weighed in on the issue two days after President Obama acknowledged his position was “evolving.”

“I think the country's evolving,” Biden said in the interview with ABC News. His comments were not the first time he has suggested the country would eventually accept and support gay marriage. Asked in a 2007 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if gay marriage was inevitable, Biden replied that “it probably is.”

In the wide-ranging Christmas Eve interview on ABC, Biden also stood by his previous assertion that U.S. troops would leave Afghanistan by 2014 “come hell or high water.”

The White House had clarified that remark, but Biden said Friday he was “absolutely confident” that the U.S. combat mission would be complete in three years, comparing the process of gradually withdrawing troops from Afghanistan to the war in Iraq, where the military declared an end to combat operations earlier this year.

The vice president did say, however, that the U.S. might retain open bases in Bagram and Kandahar beyond 2014 as part of a “train-and-assist” mission.

“I think there's equally a prospect that they'll remain open as closed,” Biden said. “... My generic point was there are not going to be 140,000 ISAF forces, International Security Forces, in Afghanistan by the year 2014.”

On taxes, Biden reiterated the Obama administration’s call to end the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy after 2012, when they will expire after the extension the president negotiated in his compromise with Republicans. Yet Biden conceded that “nothing’s a guarantee.”

Biden also revealed the top of his Christmas gift list: He asked for a golf club — a 2 wood, to be exact.