Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, 2012, President Barack Obama gave an interview in which he affirmed his support

for gay marriage, something that he'd not really done publicly up until that point.

And the reason he was saying that on this day was well because a couple days earlier

his vice president Joe Biden had kind of let slip in an interview

that maybe he and the president had kind of sorta now maybe they supported gay

marriage. Biden said that he was quote absolutely comfortable with the idea of

men marrying men and women marrying women and then in that interview

realizing that maybe he had gotten a little bit out

over his skis he tried to contextualize it he was like oh you know I'm just the vice

president I don't set policy what do I know but the cat was out of the bag I suppose and President Obama then had to scramble

and respond by being much clearer about his stance than he had been up to that point.

So let's talk about this Biden slip of the tongue, how key of a moment it was in the long

battle for marriage equality in this country and who better to join us to do that than

Sasha Eisenberg journalist and author ofagement, America's Quarter Century Struggle over same-sex

marriage. Sasha also teaches in the Political Science Department at UCLA, but

Sasha thanks for coming on. This is great to have it.

I'm really pleased to be here with you all.

Thanks.

And here, as always are Nicole Hemmer of Vanderbilt

and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

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