Another domino has fallen in the Republican ranks of the Senate as Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has come out in support of same-sex marriage, making her the 3rd Republican Senator to do so. Rob Portman of Ohio and Mark Kirk of Illinois are the two others to do so, both announcing their support earlier this year. This comes just weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on two cases involving same-sex marriage.

Murkowski posted a letter on her website titled “The Pursuit of Happiness – Without Government Interference”, making a conservative argument in favor of same-sex marriage. She cited the fierce and traditional Alaskan aversion of government intrusion, saying it was a “personal liberty issue.” She also cited civil marriage and it’s connection to family and community life as cornerstone of our national culture. Lastly she assured that religious institutions would be able to retain their own traditions, saying “Churches must be allowed to define marriage and conduct ceremonies according to their rules, but the government should not tell people who they have a right to marry through a civil ceremony.” I never really that the idea of civil marriage and the fact that you can be married in a town hall had to be cleared up but then again I had a friend who falsely believed gay marriage was being forced onto churches and such, something I happily cleared up.

So you might be asking yourself, why is Senator Murkowski endorsing same-sex marriage now, is she trying to be politically correct, wants to be hip with young people, hidden presidential aspirations? Murkowski says that while she voted in favor of defining marriage between a man and a woman and amend the Alaskan Constitution in ’98, her “thinking has evolved as America has witnessed a clear cultural shift.” Within this cultural shift is the normalization of gays and lesbians in our society. People are now realizing people that they know are gay and get to know them as such. We have openly gay characters on television and in movies, in books, musicians, artists, writers and businessmen. I do not use the term LGBT because the transgender community still faces a serious number of obstacles in gaining acceptance and bisexuals to a less extent. We even have same-sex couples who want families, in many cases adoption and just such a case is what provided the partial impetus for Murkowski to endorse same-sex marriage. The couple she met were a military family who chose to adopt four children, all siblings, so they could stay together. She sat down and heard their stories, stories she as a mother of two, could sympathize with. So what would happen if one of these two loving partners got sick? “They do not get considered for household health care benefit coverage like spouses nationwide. This first-class Alaskan family still lives a second-class existence,” Murkowski wrote in her letter.

While this is all good and a sure sign of wider acceptance of same-sex marriage in the GOP, don’t expect lawmakers to be championing the cause and pounding the drums of war. A careful reading of the letter shows that while Murkowski is in support of gay marriage, she does not want to be exactly proactive on the issue. The last line of the letter reads as so: “I support marriage equality and support the government getting out of the way to let that happen.” This final part of the letter the icing on the cake that is a state’s rights approach to same-sex marriage. That’s not to say it’s a bad strategy, it is definitely a winning one given the shift towards accepting same-sex marriage has gone, it will continue to be successful. However, in a cruel ironic twist this is not the action required to grant the federal benefits the military family she met need. While the Pentagon has moved to extend benefits to such couples, DOMA is still an obstacle in providing all of them. What Murkowski is doing, along with Portman and Kirk, is the exception to the rule in the GOP but in a decade or two we will see just the opposite. This is change you can believe in.