AfterElton Briefs: Gay African-American media images, Sean Penn in Rolling Stone, and more!

Don't worry, Sean Penn is not the world's scariest techno prophet

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.

• Boy Culture has some excerpts from the upcoming Rolling Stone interview with Sean Penn. The Milk Oscar nominee talks about the importance of the legacy of Harvey Milk and of the first time he knew what "gay" meant.

• William Shatner is continuing his looney passive-aggressive feud with former co-star George Takei. He's now saying that before he lets the out icon on his new A&E show Raw Nerve, he'll have to be vetted ... "like a horse".

• In what's sure to cause a few waves, there's a new article at Examiner.com that suggests that King David (who apparently was some dude in the Bible) was gay.

Deondray Gossett

• In Hollywood on February 11th, the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) and GLAAD will host a forum on the too-infrequent intersection of African American and LGBT images in media. The panel will explore the historical under-representation of these images, the ongoing advocacy efforts to promote the telling of these stories and the professional issues and challenges facing openly gay African American artists. Among the panelists will be out DL Chronicles creator Deondray Gossett.

• Finally, it's about time we had a good showbiz catfight, and we may have one with Etta James and Beyonce. The ageless diva apparently took umbrage with Beyonce's cover of her signature song "At Last" on Inauguration Day. "I can't stand Beyoncé. She has no business up there, singing up there on a big ol' president day, gonna be singing my song that I've been singing forever." Did I mention how much I love ageless divas?

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

This guy!