Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker, calls Proposition 8 "a fight that should have been won" and credits some in the gay community with rightly self-critiquing what went wrong. (It wasn't African American voters, though losing them so badly didn't help.) But neither does Hertzberg let the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints get off without a comment in this week's issue:

You might think that an organization that for most of the first of its not yet two centuries of existence was the world’s most notorious proponent of startlingly unconventional forms of wedded bliss would be a little reticent about issuing orders to the rest of humanity specifying exactly who should be legally entitled to marry whom. But no. The Mormon Church—as anyone can attest who has ever answered the doorbell to find a pair of polite, persistent, adolescent “elders” standing on the stoop, tracts in hand—does not count reticence among the cardinal virtues. Nor does its own history of matrimonial excess bring a blush to its cheek.

Also in this week's New Yorker: Amanda Fortini's Letter from West Hollywood checks in on the luxury rehab game via the Wonderland Center.

Related: Prince, a new Angeleno, has an opinion on gay marriage.

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2:25 PM Fri | Martin Gomez, the head librarian for Los Angeles since 2009, will become vice dean in the USC Libraries on April 2.
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