Demagogue

I just purchased Stephanie Coontz' book, Marriage, A History, and I was brousing through the chapters when I stumbled upon this sentence:

In 1970, President Richard Nixon commented that he could understand allowing the intermarriage of blacks and whites, but as for same-sex marriage: "I can't go that far — that's the year 2000." Little did he realize just how close his estimate would turn out to be.

Although Vermont became the first state to allow gay civil unions in 2000, Massachusetts was the first state (in 2004) to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple.