Sean Penn and his Milk men

In a continued effort to bring you all that is important in the world of gay entertainment and ensure that you are being spoon-fed images of gorgeous, commoditized manflesh, we present the newly-minted AfterElton Briefs. Following the usual 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.

• Above, the first official publicity still released by the studio for Gus Van Sant's Milk, with Sean Penn as the slain gay civic leader. The star power and subject are getting the pic a good deal of mainstream advance press, and it's not of the gay cowboy joke variety.

• Here's a rather funny moment from the UK Friday Night Project show in which David Tennant, after being read some Doctor Who fanfiction, asks if it might not have come from castmate John Barrowman's blog. Heh.

• If you happen to be around the house tonight, you might want to tune into SyFyPortal radio to catch AfterElton.com editor Michael Jensen and Torchwood recapper Steven Frank as they discuss Torchwood!

• Time Out New York is featuring 19 NYC men who are willing to take it all off, and letting their readers vote on which fella will strip for a future issue. Thoughts?

• The troublemaking gay penguin daddies of And Tango Makes Three are public school (and library) enemy #1 for the second year in a row. I think The Daily Show's Samantha Bee pretty much summed up the ridiculousness of the whole gay penguin controversy in the above clip.

• Apparently, gay websites linked so much to the Cayman Free Press's story about the American who was arrested for kissing another man in a Cayman club that it crashed their website. Ya mess with the bull, ya get the horns, kids.

• Martin Freeman, the "Jim" of the original The Office, wonders why more gay men in show business don't come out, noting, "there are more poofs in it than you can have hot dinners thrown at you." I guess that's ... a good thing?

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

In a continued effort to bring you all that is important in the world of gay entertainment and ensure that you are being spoon-fed images of gorgeous, commoditized manflesh, we present the newly-minted AfterElton Briefs. Following the usual 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.

• Two men who held hands and discussed same-sex marriage on an Irish morning show has been called "the first male couple to display their affections on the Irish airwaves." Unsurprisingly, the moment resulted in some backlash, but the station said that overall the response was favorable.

• Bollywood actor Siddharth Suryanarayan (pictured above) spoke out in defense of gays in his home country of India, noting that "it's time we started respecting them and giving them their much-deserved freedom just to be themselves."

• If you love gadgets, and we bet you do, Towleroad has their weekly round-up.

• For anyone who thinks that John Barrowman can't sing or dance worth a crap ... um, here's proof that he has.

• Gay groups say that a recent Italian television biopic of legendary painter Caravaggio was not gay enough.

• The so-called Concerned Women for America call children's penguin book And Tango Makes Three "sexually explicit, and Good As You just about lays an egg of his own (and rightfully so).

• Read up on all the rest that's fit to print in Michael's latest Best.Gay.Week.Ever. column, and have a great weekend, Oscars or no!

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