Tony winners David Hyde Pierce are and Sara Ramirez are all smiles at this morning's announcement

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.

• The other day we mentioned that Neil Patrick Harris and Rosie O'Donnell would be among the celebrity guests on the upcoming primetime Million Dollar Password. Here's a rather hilarious interview with NPH behind-the-scenes, compete with another excellent Regis impression.

• Hiding in Hip Hop author Terrance Dean will be reading from the tell-most book this week in NYC, and taking Q&A. Check out AfterElton.com contributor Clay Cane's site for details.

• Hey Freak Show fans: Check out this kinda hilarious video of author James St. James reading from his brilliant young adult novel along with several other Lambda Literary Award nominees at A Different Light bookstore, hosted by Christopher Rice.

• In case you missed it, Neil Patrick Harris wound up in bed with Britney last night ... so that we don't have to. Thanks for taking one for the team, NPH!

• Apparently actor Mike Epps is famous enough to be stalked and harassed into a verbal and physical altercation by the bottom-feeders at TMZ. Epps regrettably stoops the their level by calling one of the paps "a fag, homosexual". 

• RADAR takes Joel Derfner, the author of Swish, to the Hello Kitty store and out for ice cream. Given that the rest of the book's title is "My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever", I'm guessing "Swish" isn't a basketball reference?

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

Friday night's edition of ABC's 20/20 was one of their periodic "What Would You Do?" specials that presents average Americans reacting to different scenarios such as "You see a small child being berated and smacked around by their parents. What would you do?" or "You see a certain Democratic presidential nominee refusing to give up their ill-fated run for the White House. What would you do?" (The answer to the second is scream obscenities every time you see them on the television and pull out all of your hair.)

This time 20/20 explored what folks in Birmingham, Alabma and Verona, New Jersey would do if they saw gay couples engaging in public displays of affection. The answers ran the gamut, as did the quality of ABC's reporting. The segment got off to a rocky start as correspondent John Quiñones ridiculously intoned in the opening that you can "hardly turn on the TV anymore without seeing gay couples engaging in kissing." Oh, puh-leeze. I don't know what network John is watching, but I'd like to find out as my cable provider sure as heck isn't getting those channels.

Next up, the segment has Kaolin and James, a young gay couple (who are actors, but also happen to be boyfriends which I thought was cool of ABC to disclose) engaging in a very tame display of public display of affection. The repsonse? Glares, one comment from a man passing by to "f***ing get a room" and, believe it or not, a call to 911.

Operator: "Birmingham Police operator 9283"
Caller: "We have a couple of men sitting out on the bench that have been kissing and drooling all over each other for the past hour or so. It's not against the law, right?"
Operator: "Not to the best of my knowledge it's not."
Caller: "So there's no complaint I could make or have?"
Operator: "I imagine you could complain if you like ma'am. We can always send an officer down there."

Then the operator actually dispatches an officer who confronts the two men. Pardon my French, but "What the f***?" If the operator knew the two men weren't breaking the law, then what exactly was she doing dispatching the officer in the first place? Can yoy say intimidation? It gets better though. In the middle of the officer's confronting Kaolin and James, he gets a call on the radio telling him the city and police department have signed off on 20/20's experiment. But before the officer leaves he still admonishes the couple to stop what the perfectly legal thing they were doing.

Quiñones attempts to ask the officer about what just happened, but he won't respond and leaves. And that's where ABC leaves that. Imagine the reaction if any other minority couple were told to stop engaging in a PDA, yet a police officer told them to knock it off. I find it hard to believe that ABC would just let that go.

The rest of the segment is fairly optimistic after that (though there are still plenty of homophobes like the woman below who sanctimoniously goes on about how a lesbian couple kissing on the same bench won't be going to Heaven and how disgusting it all is.)

ABC reports that not only did they find most folks were fine with the gay PDA, but whether they conducted the experiment in "red" Alabama or "blue" New Jersey, ABC pretty much found the same reaction across the board. I certainly will say it was nice to see such a wide-range of folks being so accepting. It sure beat last year's segment about gay tolerance filmed in Las Vegas which included a man talking about how he misses the good old days when you could just get a gun and "put down" gay folks. I kid you not.

Watch the whole clip after the jump!

Walter Mercado

We've mentioned VH1's newest reality offering, Viva Hollywood!, a few times because of its colossal camp value: in this competition, a handful of aspiring telenovela stars suffer through the Seven Deadly Sins of hilariously over-the-top Spanish-language soaps for the chance at a television contract with Telemundo, with the help of a bizarre assortment of camp icons ranging from Charo to Walter Mercado.

But last night's second installment was anything but hospitable to gay viewers. When the "Lust" challenge asked two of the men to act out a same-sex love scene, one of the stupidly macho contestants, Vicni, flew into a hissyfit of epically childish proportions.

Guest judge Christian de la Fuente eventually talked the homophobic ass into not leaving the house (yes, he was actually going to quit the show rather than have to play a gay character in a two-minute scene and had locked himself in the bathroom to cry about it) and Vinci essentially rewrote the scene to make his character straight, leaving scene partner Berto (also straight, but not an idiotic bigot) to essentially carry the scene by himself. Berto won the challenge and ironically picked Vinci to share his prize, a $10,000 shopping spree at some clubwear store in Encino (hey, this ain't Extreme Makeover Home Edition).

Vinci would probably have a vaca if he saw his picture on a gay site

Interestingly, the other guys in the house tried to talk Vinci back from the brink, telling him he was overreacting to the extreme and that any good actor would be able to separate fact from fiction. When Geovannie pointed out that when he played a gay character in a play his own father was surprisingly supportive, Vinci fired back that no Latino father would ever support seeing his son play a gay person, and then accused Geo of being gay himself before leaving the dinner table in a huff. Wow. 2008, folks. And he's from Miami!

But here's the annoying bit: somehow, Vinci isn't picked as the loser of the challenge. Despite throwing the entire show into disarray, rewriting his scene, and being a blatantly homophobic pig, he was for some reason given a pass by the producers and judges. Considering that the challenge was to portray lust and he removed the lust from his scene, I don't see how they can justify not choosing him as the loser, and it's clear they just kept him around because he's going to stir up more drama later (they wound up getting rid of one of the less volatile characters).

I've got no beef with reality TV, especially when it reveals some interesting truths about human nature, as Vinci's histrionics over playing gay probably did. But the problem comes when that bad behavior is rewarded for the sake of "good television", which only sends a message that this kind of lack of respect is okay as long as you're dynamic enough to carry it. I for one won't be watching any more of this show, which is a shame. I mean, we really don't get enough Walter Mercado, right?

I'm also going to miss seeing Carlos Ponce every week. Is it just me or could he and Raul Esparza have been separated at birth?

Carlos Ponce and Raul Esparza

You can check out some outtakes from the whole gay-panicky mess after the jump. 

As a well-informed follower of pop culture (after all, you're reading AfterElton), you're probably familiar with the Rickroll, where a link to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" video is sprung on an unsuspecting clicker. You might get an e-mail promising footage of the Nuke kisses taken out of the Valentine's and Christmas episodes of As the World Turns and instead you get a Stock Aitken Waterman single stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

The internet prank reached new levels of prominence recently when YouTube redirected all the videos featured on its front page to the Rickroll video for April Fool's Day. Even The Soup got into the action last weekend, playing a clip from the video after setting the audience up for a LA Ink clip.

Now, a contributor at Pam's House Blend is saying that the origin of the Rickroll is based on homophobic humor. According to the entry, the meme started after a Family Guy episode introduced the song with the words, "Here's a song by a gay guy." Family Guy fans repeated the introduction until it morphed into the Rickroll video. He explains his first encounter with the Rickroll:

I was introducted to Rickrolling by my teenage nephew about a year or so ago. My nephew told me that he and his friends amuse themselves by sending music and video clips of Rick Astley via e-mail, and cellphone.

When my nephew showed me the video of Rick Astley singing Never gonna Give You Up on YouTube, he laughed out loud uncontrolably. Then, I asked him, "Why do you think this is so funny?"

Silence.

Uh, oh. I'd seen that silent response before. My nephew suddenly remembered that his favorite uncle is gay. He was at a loss for words as to how to explain why he finds Rick Astley to be funny.

I had to press him for the truth, "Is it because he looks gay?"

"Uh, it isn't that he looks so gay, Uncle Fritz. It is because, uh, his voice doesn't fit the way he looks."

"Gay?"

Silence.

He suggests a counter-meme, the Bananaramaroll, which would trade Astley's tune with Bananarama's "I Heard a Rumor". The idea of Bananarama going viral makes me pretty happy, particularly since the video has some memorable choreography, hunky guys and has Siobhan, Sara and Keren looking like this:

Still, that makes me look at the Rickroll in a different light. The point of a joke is in the eye of the beholder and while I laugh at the Rickroll for the bland catchiness of "Never Gonna Give You Up" and Astley's hypnotic, cheeseball dance moves, I can see how some people probably do see the joke as "He's so gay." Not because Astley is openly gay (as far as I know he isn't) but because they don't find him sufficiently manly. What do you think? Is there a homophobia at the root of the joke?

(And as a side note, after looking for the images for this post I'll be spending the rest of the day submerged in a world of Stock Aitken Waterman, I can't help it.

Yesterday, we gave you a heads-up that Ellen DeGeneres would have on American Idol cast-off Danny Noriega, as well as gay-friendly comedian Wanda Sykes, but we didn't realize what a gay hour of television the show would be.

It started early in the show, when Ellen brought up Oklahoma state Representative Sally Kern's anti-gay tirade where Kerns declared that "I honestly think (homosexuality is) the biggest threat, even more than terrorism." As Ellen played the audio of Kerns speaking, the cameras cut to images of the studio audience looking stunned and uncomfortable to hear such words. Definitely adding to the discomfort was a clear understanding that when Kern talked about the threat of homosexuality, she's talking about people like Ellen.

This is one of those moments that has me really appreciating the power Ellen has with her show. Bigotry is much easier to voice when you're railing against some anonymous mass, but Kern's words become ridiculous when you try to associate them with real people, like Ellen. By being open about who she is, she has the power to make clear how hurtful and hateful words like Kern's really are.

"I feel like there's some misinformation going on here," Ellen responded, "and I think I need to call her." As she listened to the phone ring, Ellen added, "I'm trying to figure out which societies have disappeared that we don't know about." Unfortunately, all Ellen got was a full voice mailbox, so Ellen tried to leave a message via the airwaves. "Give me call, I'm here usually and also later on I'll be at the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament, of course, that's if it doesn't conflict with the women's basketball games I go to."

Following that, Ellen brought on Wanda Sykes who immediately dropped a joke at Kerns' expense: "I would like for her to move up in government because if she thinks homosexuality is a bigger threat then terrorism maybe she'll get our troops out of Iraq and maybe invade West Hollywood ... anything to get our troops home." Wanda continued by calling Kerns outdated, saying, "She's like bell bottoms." Ouch, talk about things that don't look good even as retro kitch.

It's interesting to note that Sykes' sexuality has been discussed widely in the press as well, including in the "Glass Closet" article that Michael Musto wrote last year that essentially outed stars like David Hyde Pierce, Jodie Foster, and Anderson Cooper. And while she didn't address her own sexuality here, her mention that she spent her birthday skiing with her "girlfriend" does lead one to wonder if she means more than just "friend who is a girl".

Following that, Skyes gave her take on the Democratic Presidential campaign, where she hilariously mocked how the media has tried to simplify the race a simply matter of race vs. gender. There's really nothing I can say to add to her words, the outspoken comedian says it all so well.

GodTube is a Christian alternative to YouTube, and just like its heathen counterpart, users can upload homemade videos. Unlike YouTube, though, you won't see frat guys mooning out of car windows or drunk co-eds. What you will see are some of the most unintentionally hilarious videos ever made.

Of course, the first thing I did when I was there was enter the word "homosexual" in the search bar. Most of the videos were of the boring, "Christ can change you" variety, but a few were ... priceless.

This one is my personal favorite:RAINBOWS. The rainbow is beautiful and majestic ... but did you know that the rainbow has been HIJACKED by those who seek to turn its beauty into a symbol of PERVERSION AND FILTH?

This one is called ROCK AND ROLL'S SATANIC & HOMOSEXUAL INFLUENCE, and it's about the evil influence of people like ...Tori Amos and Garth Brooks. When the narrator recites the Christina Aguilera lyrics for Genie in a Bottle, I dare you not to giggle.

More GodTube fun after the break...

Overall, YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association, has a good history of supporting books that can be or special interest to LGBT youth. James St. James' Freak Show was named on their 2008 list of the Best Books for Young Adults and their past graphic novel recommendations include titles like Young Avengers and Top 10: The Forty-Niners. However, the organization sparked a bit of controversy this year when it picked sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card for its Margaret A. Edwards Award this year.

The Margaret A. Edwards Award is given to an author who has a lifetime history of "helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world." Past winners include Ursula K. Le Guin, S.E. Hinton, Anne McCaffrey and Paul Zindel.

This year, the award has gone to science fiction writer Orson Scott Card, who is best known for Ender's Game, which won multiple awards when it was published (the short story that inspired it is also considered a classic of anti-war sci-fi). However, in recent years, Card has also become known for his political columns where he has expressed some strongly anti-gay positions.

Card's anti-gay views first came to light in a column opposing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, where Card said that advocates for marriage equality were "guided only by the slogan of immaturity and barbarism: 'If it feels good, do it!'" Card's most damning comment came when he advocated for laws criminalizing homosexualty because, essentially, he prefers his homosexuals closeted and fearful:

First off, John Gibson has apologized (read: done insincere damage control) for his mockery of Heath Ledger's death. This is of course mere breaths after he defended his using clips from Brokeback Mountain to make light of the tragedy (not to mention calling the actor a "freak"). So whaddaya think, is he being sincere or did someone lean on him? I mean, aside from GLAAD, half of MSNBC, and pretty much the entire blogosphere? To me, whenever anyone says "I'm sorry that some are offended by my comments", it's doubly-insulting, because what they're really saying is, "not only am I not sorry for what I said, but you're a sissy for being offended by it, nyah-nyah-nyaaaaaaaaah!"

In related "news", gossips at the NYDN are claiming that another troublesome Gibson - this time noted anti-Semite, noted homophobe, and noted anti-shaving repopulation enthusiast Mel Gibson - distanced himself from Ledger after the young actor took the Brokeback role.

The piece claims that although the two were close after Ledger played Gibson's son in The Patriot, Gibson's homophobia intervened when Ledger opted to play a gay man that Gibson couldn't throw out a window while wearing makeup and a skirt.

Gibson's reps are denying any such claim and Ledger's reps did not respond with a comment. Not that they should.

Meanwhile, back in the land of those capable of experiencing authentic emotion, Ledger's family is en route to New York, where the funeral for the actor will be held.

The Onion News Network has broadcast an insightful (and hilarious) report on Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and his apparently conflicted relationship with gay issues.

First, they go back to Romney's record as Governor of Massachusetts and dig up some of his previous public statements about gays and lesbians.

Then they diagnose Romney's current tolerance problem and even helpfully offer some suggestions on how the GOP Presidential candidate could overcome the problem and get back in the graces of bigoted voters.

Political Analyst Arnold Renfro: All the voters really want is a clear answer from the candidate himself. Does Romney really believe that homosexuals are creatures of sin doomed to spend eternity drowning in a lake of fire or not?

News Anchor Andrea Bennett: Exactly.

Renfro: You really have to look at the facts themselves. Mitt Romney was Governor of Massachusetts. Massachusetts allows gay marriage. Mitt Romney does not resign as Governor of Massachusetts.

Bennett: So Romney has a fundamental credibility problem when it comes to gays?

Renfro: Yes. Its going to be very difficult, but he needs to come out and explain from his own experience why he finds gays to be sub-human degenerates. The fact of the matter is he has never once come out and said that he's perpetrated a hate crime against a homosexual.

Bennett: No he hasn't. Now is there anything Romney can do to mend fences with all of these constituents that he's offended?

Renfro: Well, he can disown a gay relative. Maybe promote a bill that bans gay adoption.

Bennett: Hmm.

Renfro: He can call an opponent a faggot. He can call anybody a faggot. You know, that actually may be the only thing that's left to him.

Bennett: Now, isn't there a chance he could win back some of the support by making disparaging remarks about women or Mexicans?

Renfro: Well sure. A quick ethnic slur might actually shore up some of that bigot support, but he's relied so heavily on the bigot vote that I think at this point it's just too late for that.

Sure it's only satire, but this fake news report is also painfully accurate, and is it just me or would Renfro & Bennett be right at home over on FOX News? The entire Onion News Network video clip appears after the break. Enjoy!