AfterElton Briefs: Gus Van Sant is honored, a gay celebrity leaves the jungle, and more!

Sean Penn honors Gus Van Sant at The Gotham Awards (Getty)

Following this assortment of carefully-selected news items, interested readers can find a refreshing pic of a hot man in underwear after the jump. Yes, we're serious.

• The 18th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards were held in NYC last night with Sean Penn paying tribute to his Milk director Gus Van Sant. The out filmmaker received a special award for his "contributions to independent filmmaking".

• A new poll commissioned by GLAAD shows that a majority of U.S. adults favor legal protections for gay and transgendered Americans. According to The Pulse of Equality Survey, three quarters of those asked want either marriage or domestic partnerships/legal unions for gay and lesbian couples, and seven out of ten oppose laws that would ban qualified gay or lesbian couples from adopting.

• Gay fave Chelsea Handler is the subject of this month's "Big Gay Following" on The Advocate.com. She talks about her late mother (who was Mormon), donating to defeat Prop 8, and she has very harsh words for Tori Spelling, who she feels is using the gay community just to create a fan base: "She doesn’t have compassion for them. She’s not going out doing things for them. She’s like, 'Oh, I have such a huge gay following.' It’s because no one else is following her!"

• Above you can see the out George Takei and Brian Paddick teaming up to complete a jungle ostrich challenge (don't ask) on the UK reality competition I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!. Unfortunately, despite his valiant efforts, former MP Brian was the latest casualty of the show and was voted off, which means we won't be seeing any more koala-baring showers.

• And finally, Details has published a a column about "Alpha Gays" that reads like an Onion parody: "As the 42-foot Norwegian yacht tacked into the wind, the rugged master-of-the-universe types scrambled to adjust the jib. To the casual observer, they appeared to be active men of means on some kind of luxury bonding excursion. And they were. But they also happened to be homosexual." It just gets better from there.

And today's Briefs are brought to you by...

This guy!