"I am a life-long Republican because I believe in promoting freedom and limiting the reach of government," Murkowski wrote on her Web site. "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."
