In Michelle Obama: A Life, author Peter Slevin offers a detailed personal history of the life of Michelle Obama — once a young girl from Chicago’s South Side and now the First Lady we know today. The biography also takes an intimate look at her relationship and marriage to the President, including her and her family’s initial hesitation about the relationship, as well political disagreements she has had with her husband in the past.

In an interview with Jezebel.com, Slevin reveals that President Obama’s initial lack of public endorsement of gay marriage led to conflict between them,

In A Life, you wrote about but didn’t name an issue the Obamas agreed upon in private but the President didn’t endorse publicly—a move the FLOTUS disagreed with. Was that issue gay marriage?

Yes, you’re absolutely right. Michelle had done outreach to the gay and lesbian community early in her career when she was standing in for Barack. And Barack himself had been very much in favor of gay rights and marriage as early as 1996, but he didn’t say that when he was running for president, did he? It’s pretty clear that he felt that he could not. His advisors certainly believed that he was pulling his punches