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Axelrod wrote in his book published earlier Tuesday that Obama lied about his position on the issue for the sake of political expediency, writing that Obama had actually supported gay marriage for years. In coming out in support of same-sex couples' right to marry in May 2012, Obama had cited "the evolution that I went through."

"I think David is mixing up my personal feelings with my position on the issue," Obama said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. "I always felt that same-sex couples should be able to enjoy the same rights, legally, as anybody else, and so it was frustrating to me not to, I think, be able to square that with what were a whole bunch of religious sensitivities out there."

Obama had previously supported civil unions for gay couples and explained Tuesday that he used to think that was "a sufficient way of squaring the circle." But eventually, he told Buzzfeed on Tuesday, Obama changed his political position because of "the pain and the sense of stigma that was being placed on same-sex couples who are friends" of his.

But in his book, "Believer: My Forty Years in Poltics," Axelrod suggests politics played a bigger role in Obama's public position on the issue throughout his first presidential campaign and into the first term of his presidency.

"Gay marriage was a particularly nagging issue. For as long as we had been working together, Obama had felt a tug between his personal views and the politics of gay marriage," Axelrod writes. "Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a 'sacred union.'"

And Axelrod recalled that Obama said he just didn't "feel my marriage is somehow threatened by the gay couple next door."

It was just one example of the "recurring tension between Obama the idealist and Obama the politician," Axelrod wrote.

"Obama never felt comfortable with his compromise and, no doubt, compromised position," Axelrod writes. "He routinely stumbled over the question when it came up in debates or interviews. 'I'm just not very good at bulls---ting,' he said with a sigh after one such awkward exchange."

Axelrod also cited a questionnaire from 1996 previously cited in news reports as evidence of Obama's longtime support for gay marriage.

While running for his first term in the Illinois State Senate, Obama signed a questionnaire in which he answered that he "favored legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages." The questionnaire came to light in 2009, days before Obama's inauguration.

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Obama predicts gay marriage sweep