Sen. Lisa Murkowski comes out in favor of gay marriage

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska announced her support for gay marriage on Wednesday — the third Republican in the Senate to do so.

Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois and Rob Portman of Ohio previously gave their public thumbs-up to same-sex marriage.

Mrs. Murkowski explained her views, via a posting on her Senate website: “I am a life-long Republican because I believe in promoting freedom and limiting the reach of government. When government does act, I believe it should encourage family values. I support the right of all Americans to marry the person they love and choose because I believe doing so promotes both values: it keeps politicians out of the most private and personal aspects of peoples’ lives — while also encouraging more families to form and more adults to make a lifetime commitment to one another.”

She said she was announcing her decision now to coincide with the looming Supreme Court decisions in two separate gay marriage cases — one involving the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the other concerning a California ballot ban on gay marriage, known as Proposition 8, The Associated Press reported.

Mrs. Murkowski hinted in March of a possible support for gay marriage. She said in various media reports then that her views of the issue were “evolving.”