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...

 
Eric Hyman and Max Mutchnick and their daughters

Yesterday's New York Times gave two (three, actually) weddings between gay men high-profile coverage in the crucial last days before voting on California's Proposition 8 takes place.

In a lengthy spread in the Fashion & Style section, the paper covered the wedding of Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick and his husband Eric Hyman, including a picture of the couple and their two daughters.

And in the traditional Weddings & Celebrations section, the paper announced the double wedding of GLAAD's Damon Romine and Charles Robbins (executive director of The Trevor Project) and Romine's father David and his partner Larry Barrett, who have been together for over 16 years.

Recently-wed George Takei and Brad Altman were among the guests of the tandem Romine wedding, and both newlywed couples celebrated by taking in Leslie Jordan's show after the ceremony.

Warmest wishes to these couples, and to all those Californians (and otherwise) who have exercised their rights since the change in legislation regarding same-sex marriage this summer. (Including my own pals Pietro and Brent, who flew from NYC to San Fran to get married over the weekend. Congrats, guys!)

Michael Urie (Ugly Betty's Marc) at a recent PAPER style party

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.

• GLAAD just announced that in honor of National Coming Out Day this Saturday, a handful of networks will be airing PSAs from GLAAD's "Be an Ally & Friend" campaign. Fox Reality Channel, USA Network, IFC, Lifetime, The N, SCI FI Channel, Sundance Channel, and various ABC affiliates will be among the nets airing the celeb-filled spots. Very cool.

• In his first press conference since wiping up Beijing with his Speedo, out Aussie diver Matthew Mitcham noted that he was "surprised" and "sad" to be the only out gay man at this year's games but is proud to carry the responsibility.

• Queen Latifah (she of the hilarious SNL appearance) was profiled in-depth by The New York Times, and the ever-present questions about her sexuality didn't surface until the last page: "Assume whatever you want. You do it anyway." Well ... we don't have much of a choice, do we?

• Above, from 365Gay: Gay businessman Mitchell Gold speaks about his new book Crisis, in which he and 40+ others share their coming-out stories and call upon the conservative right to stop demonizing gay teens.

• Drew Barrymore says in an upcoming Bazaar interview that she cried when Barack Obama spoke up for gay couples having equal spousal hospital visitation rights, as it represents the kind of world she wants to live in.

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

I hate to throw a wet blanket over GLAAD's annual report touting that the number of GLBT characters on television has doubled, but in taking a closer look at the numbers I can't quite gin up their level of enthusiasm over the news.

My beef is that this report seems to value quantity over quality. Is a doubling of "barely there" gay characters really something to celebrate? Look at Joe the Bartender on Grey's Anatomy. Sightings of Big Foot at Seattle Grace Hospital occurred more often than did sightings of Joe last season.  GLAAD's report acknowledges this fact, but still includes Joe as recurring in hopes that he'll show up more frequently.

GLAAD's list of gay characters includes a cavalcade of others that are also "barely there" including Oscar on The Office, Eric on Gossip Girl, Chaz on ER, Gay Kenny on My Name is Earl, Roy on Lipstick Jungle, Andrew, Bob and Lee on Desperate Housewives and Cliff on Ugly Betty. As much as I love Desperate Housewives, Andrew is basically background scenery at this point, much less Wisteria Lanes' resident gay couple, Bob and Lee. 

Tuc Watkins and Kevin Rahm on Desperate Housewives

Throw in Marco on Privileged who is so far definitely a secondary character (I call him Exposition Marco because so far he's just there so the main character doesn't have to talk to herself) and Larry on the wretched Do Not Disturb (which is unlikely to live long enough to see who our next president is much less survive until the new year) and I'm actually feeling kind of blue about gay representation on scripted broadcast television. Oh, yeah, the numbers of GLBT characters are down on cable as well.

Today GLAAD released its annual report on LGBT characters on TV and there's plenty of good news to be found in the report. On broadcast networks the media watchdog group found this fall season to have the most queer characters in the report's history — a total of 35 characters, up from the 20 GLAAD counted last season.

ABC remains the most gay-inclusive network. It is the only channel with LGBT lead characters, the only network with transgender characters and the network with the greatest number of LGBT characters overall — 15 out of the 35 counted. There is a downside, however, to ABC's record. While it has the highest number of LGBT characters, only one of them is a person of color — Grey's Anatomy's Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez).

ABC's LGBT characters
(Not pictured: Mo and Trish from the upcoming animated series The Goode Family)

Meanwhile, for a network that has fared poorly in the past reports, Fox is suddenly showing some promise. This season, the network has 9 LGBT characters, the second highest number among the five networks. Things look less encouraging, however, when you realize how many of those characters come from animated series.

Fox's LGBT characters
(Not pictured: Andrew from the upcoming animated series Sit Down, Shut Up)

In third place, GLAAD counted seven LGBT characters on NBC shows. That started to feel a lot less promising, however, as I tried to find pictures of the characters. Some of them are so "barely there" that it's hard to find a picture of the character if you're not familiar with the show.

NBC's LGBT characters

Finally, at the bottom of the heap are The CW and CBS, with a total of three gay characters between them. That includes the two barely-there gay characters on Gossip Girl and Privileged as well as Orlando Jones' upcoming role on The Rules of Engagement.

The CW's LGBT characters

One further observation — there's a gender divide that suggests that the networks treat queer men and women differently. GLAAD counts six bisexual characters and only one — American Dad's Roger the Alien — is male. (And ... he's an alien.) Meanwhile, all of the lesbian characters that GLAAD lists are only recurring characters who don't appear regularly on their shows. I'll let our AfterEllen.com sisters discuss what they think it means, though I thought it was certainly worth noting.

So where does this increase in LGBT characters come from? It turns out that it's a pretty even mix. Some come from characters on new shows such as Larry on Do Not Disturb. Some are new characters on established shows including Marc's boyfriend Cliff on Ugly Betty or Angela on Bones. Others are characters we didn't know were gay or bisexual at the time of the last report, including Gossip Girl's Eric and House's Thirteen — that's encouraging since it means that things are improving at different points in the development of a series.

You can take a look at the list of characters and, if you'd like to compare them here's the list for the 2007-2008 season.

What do you think? Does the report leave you optimistic about the progress of LGBT characters on television? More interestingly, what do you think of the various networks' showings?

COMIC-CON VERSUS THE SHARK:
It feels like every year the San Diego Comic-Con is followed with some kind of discussion of if the event has outgrown San Diego, gotten too big for its own good or just generally jumped the shark. (This year's Nerd Prom certainly has drawn some complaints.) Graeme McMillan compiles the gripes, including complaints from the mainstream press sent to cover it, celebrities unable to get to their parties due to the huge crowds, comics publisher IDW talking about puling back and more press complains about too little comics at the Comic-Con.

What, Paris Hilton's appearance only gets mentioned in a quote? I thought she and Kim Kardashian were supposed to represent the end of Comic-Con's geek cool?

It's been a couple years since I've been able to get myself to Comic-Con (I am going through such withdrawal, I could mug someone for a Cafe 222 waffle ... if people were in the habit of carrying a hot breakfast on them) but I've long said that there's so much going on that Comic-Con that Comic-Con is what you make of it. You can focus on the indie comics, the manga publishers, the capes and cowls or just be there for the TV/film coverage without getting to bogged down in other aspects. Has that changed in the past two years of growth?

However, I've said for a few years now that the TV and film studios are overlooking the potential of Comic-Con by focusing on male-skewing titles. After all, thanks to the rise of publishers like Viz and Oni, Comic-Con attendees includes the fans of Nana, The Wallflower and Hopeless Savages and I can see those fans getting excited over an Ugly Betty panel. I'm disappointed that, so far, that audience keeps getting overlooked.

OFF*PRINT:
This was the news I was expecting/dreading when the news of Tokyopop's financial troubles first came out. Jen Lee Quick recently revealed that her incredibly likable (and adorably quirky) boy-meets-boy title Off*Beat won't see an ending anytime soon:

"as some of you probably heard Tokyopop is doing a lot of restructuring in the company. many of the OEL projects got affected. Off*beat got put on "hiatus". what does that mean exactly? i'm not entirely certain myself. i apologize for not sharing the news earlier but i was hoping to learn more information about the future of the project. all i can say still at this moment is that i have expressed deep concern to my former editor that i wanted a means to finish the story and give my readers closure. i'm trying not to say too much because i want to keep my options and relations as good as possible. i was given a kind of vague response quite some time ago that things were still being re-organized on their end and they were looking in to options for allowing their creators to finish their stories.

in short, tokyopop put the freeze on off*beat and there's nothing i can do about it until i hear otherwise...which maybe never."

The quirky and endearing Off*Beat

I'm not surprised, as I noted earlier, since the series has been behind schedule for a while. Still, it's disappointing to hear that the story won't be completed anytime soon; Off*Beat was a charming story that I would have loved even if it were a traditional opposite-sex romance. Fingers crossed that something happens to let us see the how Christopher and Colin's courtship wraps up.

IT'S NEVER JUST ONE THING:
Well, sadly, it's never one thing. A week before I heard about Tokyopop's problems, YAOI publisher DramaQueen had also hit troubled waters and now the Boys Next Door Blog is reporting that DramaQueen's anthology Rush looks like it won't be putting out any more issues, another hint that the publisher might not make it survive these troubles. Rush was DramaQueen's attempt to put out new material with western creators and, it seems, those creators have found their efforts frustrated by business troubles.

"Night and Day"'s Adder (by Akira Atsushi, left) and "Roulette"'s Riley (by Tina Anderson, right):

Rush was one of many titles that I never got around to sampling, so I can't say much about it. Are there any Rush readers out there who will be missing the series?

YAOI may be one of the few genres of manga still seen as having plenty of growth potential but with Iris, DramaQueen and Tokyopop hitting hard times, that seems to leave YAOI Press as the last healthy publisher creating new male romance comics.

Treasure by Studio Kawaii

I'm wondering: do we have any followers of YAOI Press out there? At last year's YAOI-Con, I ended up picking up period pirate romance Treasure! and mostly found it to be a fun bit of escapism (plus I liked how the story set up the naval setting as a way for the protagonists to try to escape the homophobia of the era).

Kevin Reilly (Photo credit: Getty Images/Frank Micelotta)

Today was Fox's turn at the TCA and I asked Fox's Entertainment President Kevin Reilly (pictured above at last year's TCA) about his network coming in last for the second year in a row on GLAAD's Network Responsibility Index. Asked for his thoughts on failing again and whether they was anything coming down the pipeline other than the not-exactly-groundbreaking gay character on Do Not Disturb.

Said Reilly:

"I haven't had the chance to put any of the product on the air. I can say we've got several shows now moving forward with gay characters in them. I think our score ... I think our ... the scores get affected by what's ... sometimes you've actually got great representation and then for commercial or creative reasons something gets canceled and your numbers go down. That's something we're really committed to. In fact, right now were in production on a pilot called Virtuality that Ron Moore and Michael Taylor created and Peter Berg is directing. It's got a gay relationship that is as dimensional and honest as anything I've ever seen portrayed on television right now. If we move forward on that I think that is something to really note."

Another journalist followed up with a question about Fox's commitment to diversity overall given that the new season's largest part for a minority is on Seth Macfarlane's Family Guy spin-off, Cleveland.

Reilly talked about how diversity at networks used to be a department that had yearly meetings, but that Fox's commitment was at the center and woven in the fabric at what they do. He said it was really a strange disconnect between that commitment and the results ... which was basically the answer he gave us last year in our two part article on the lack of gay visibility.

As for Virtuality, the show is a creation of writers Ronald Moore (Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek) and Michael Taylor (Battlestar Galactica) and director Peter Berg (Hancock). Given the sort of "gay" content that has passed on Battlestar (basically straight guy fantasies and the lesbian character in the stand-alone movie Razor) you have to figure they really owe us.

The gay couple Reilly referred to are named Manny and Val and hate being stuck on galley duty aboard the star ship Phaeton. According to the Sci Fi website io9 which has snuck a look at some of the script, the series is about a crew embarking on a very long journey forcing them to spend a great deal of time in virtual reality where peculiar things happen.

It's slightly discouraging that the gay characters are the cooks (Neelix, anyone?), but obviously everything depends on the execution and I've got high hopes. It's certainly seems like Reilly's best chance to follow up on words that sound great, but if not followed up one, will guarantee the network gets a failing mark again next year.

Forget the awful posters, feverdream commercials, hasty re-shoots and sinking feeling that the entire cast is slumming it for a paycheck. (Update: Allow me to add the array of stellar notices that have lifted the film to a soaring 34% approval rating on RottenTomatoes.) If you need yet another reason to skip the ill-conceived Will Smith superhero vehicle Hancock this weekend, GLAAD may have it for you:

At approximately 24 minutes into the film, while Jason Bateman’s PR whiz works to rehabilitate the superhero’s tarnished image, he shows Hancock three comic book images in an effort to inspire him. But Hancock rejects the traditional image of costumed superheroes as he responds to each one: “Homo. Homo in red. Norwegian homo.”

Shades of 300, only without all the codpieces to help the insults go down. I'm sure (or would at least hope) Bateman and Smith don't personally have any ill will toward gays, but a summer movie that is meant to be enjoyed by everyone just flat-out should not be so backhanded to anyone in its audience. 

Ah well, saves me my curious $11.