Pennsylvania House approves Malcolm Kenyatta's marriage equality bill to update outdated state lawhttps://www.advocate.com/politics/states/pennsylvania-house-marriage-equality-bill 🔗Christopher Wiggins (26 March 2026)
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta rose on the Pennsylvania House floor and offered a line that cut through hours of legislative debate and decades of legal inertia. "God did not make me to hate me," he said. Minutes later, the chamber voted to move Pennsylvania closer to matching its laws to that principle.
The Pennsylvania House passed legislation Wednesday to codify marriage equality into state law, approving the measure in a 127–72 vote with bipartisan support, according to NBC affiliate WPXI in Pittsburgh. The bill would redefine marriage in state statute as a union between "two individuals," replacing language dating back to the 1990s that limits marriage to "one man and one woman." It would also repeal provisions that invalidate same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.
The vote does not change who can marry in Pennsylvania. That question was settled more than a decade ago by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. But it does address something quieter and, in this political moment, more urgent: whether states will rely on federal precedent alone, or take steps to insulate those rights within their own laws.
