Afternoon Delight: Lady Gaga reaches out to homeless LGBT youth, HuffPo hearts Rachel Maddow, Jane Lynch is smitten

Just when you thought Lady Gaga had maxed out on awesome, she goes and launches a national campaign to help homeless LGBT youths.

The singer targeted organizations in 25 cities with a key focus on homeless LGBT youth. In exchange for an eight hours contribution to one of the selected shelters, some worthy Gaga fans will receive free tickets to her sold-out Monster Ball tour.

“I’d say about 10% of our youth are LGBT,” said Sylvia LaMalfa, Associate Executive Director of Covenant House California. “It’s sad to say, but a disproportionately high number of youth are driven from their homes because they’re LGBT.”

Kidnap all the Commissioner Gordons you want, Lady Gaga; just never stop being you.

The Huffington Post got a little googly-eyed over Rachel Maddow today. Columist Joan E. Dowlin called Maddow a “rock star,” and took at shot at explaining why she’s so popular. She even touched on her sexuality:

Ms. Maddow also brought attention to the proposed Ugandan law where homosexuals could be killed just for being gay and the role of American Christian missionaries in the promotion of intolerance towards GLBT people. Because of her reporting, many Christian leaders such as Rev. Rick Warren felt the need to condemn the law. As Rachel has explained many times, she is presenting gay issues not because she is an out lesbian but because they are human rights issues. In any case, it is great to have a voice for gays on prime time cable.

A voice for the gays that comes out of the prettiest face – and don’t worry: Dowlin mentions that as well.

I don’t watch The Real World, but I am super-duper familiar with this season’s Ryan thanks to Movieline’s articles “25 Things to Hate About Ryan, The Real World’s Worst Cast Member.” And “25 More Insane Qualities Ryan Exhibited on Last Night’s Real World.” And “5 More Things to Hate About Ryan from The Real World.”

Last week Ryan went on a homophobic rampage on Twitter. (I’m not going to link to it because I don’t want to give voice to that kind of hate-speech, but you can Google it and find the content in a gazillion places if you want.) GLAAD swooped in faster than Batman and demanded an apology, which MTV swiftly coerced out of him:

GLAAD also scheduled a meeting with MTV to talk about the dangers of airing those kinds of anti-LGBT sentiments.

You know how I like to combat hateful Tweets? With Tweets like this one:

We miss you too, Sarah Shahi, but it’s good to see that you’re still sleeping with that teddy bear we sent you.

P.S. when I Google image-ed “sarah shahi teddy bear,” this is what I got:

See what just happened? You are either so turned by Shahi on or so creeped out by Teddy Ruxpin, that you have already forgotten about Real World Ryan.

In case you missed it yesterday, The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck has some well-researched opinions about why some women come out later in life. (Spoiler alert: It’s because older men go for younger women, so there are no viable penises (peni?) left.)

Onto sweeter things: Jane Lynch is in love with her new wife. I mean like in love, in love. Like the kind of in love that makes the six year old inside of you point your finger at your throat and go, “Gag me with a spoon!”. Lynch talked to New York Magazine’s Vulture blog this week about Glee, about her 2007 comedy I Do & I Don’t, and also about something else. What was it? Oh, right: her wife.

Your New York Times wedding announcement was very sweet.

Thank you, we were thrilled. We purposely didn’t do any press about it at all, we chose only one thing, to have an announcement in the Times, and they were kind enough to offer us a featured spot. Both of us are so impressed that the Times puts same-sex couples in their announcements, so we wanted to be one of the happy couples in the Sunday paper.

What’s it like for you, at this point in your career, to have this huge, zeitgeisty fame from Glee.

That it’s happening now is really sweet, though at the same time, I’m kind of slowing down my life. In terms of my career, I’m not running around at the fever pitch like I used to. I’ve got my family, and I’m renovating my house – I’m really doing some nesting, so it’s sweet to have Glee, which is at least going to be on for a couple seasons. We start up again this week, and I’m really excited to get back. They haven’t told me anything.

Sigh. Swoon. Oh, er – I mean, gag.

Funny or Die is at it again, this time with a parody video of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes.”

And finally, public relations firm The Access Point has ranked the most influential female voices on the web, and would you just take a look at number nine:

The ranking system takes into account things like Google rank and audience engagement and the frequency with which original content is shared over various forms of social media. What does that mean? Well, it means that we – you (the readers) and us (the writers) – have worked together to push a lesbian and bi-related site into the top ten most influential places on the whole female internet! That is huge for queer visibility! Thank you for helping us make it happen!

After last night’s Pretty Little Liars, I had an all-time record number of requests to make Bianca Lawson today’s Afternoon Delight. As always, your wish is my command.

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