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.