The Jersey Shore Studs Land on Village Voice's Queer Issue Cover

Thank you, Village Voice, for this wonderful stunt. According to the New York Post, the men of MTV's Jersey Shore were excited for their shirtless Voice cover. However, they didn't know that they were going to be on the cover of the Queer Issue, illustrating a feature story about gay Guidos in New Jersey!

The Voicearticle explores how Guido gays interact in their homophobic Jersey Shore environment. It centers on Craig Austin, a middle-aged Guido who spends his days bringing them together, citing his 18-man hot tub as "a big bowl of cute boy soup."

From the story:

Back at his secluded ranch, Austin maps a queer corollary to MTV's Jersey Shore. His outsize hot tub sits on a 1,000-square-foot deck alongside a tiki bar and plenty of nooks and crannies. "If you build it, they will come" has been Austin's mantra.

At least one of Austin's regulars is testing the waters of Asbury Park: "Dino," a self-described "horny 25-year-old," could have been ordered straight from Jersey Shore Central Casting. A grad student who lives in the Bronx, he is out to his second-generation Italian family, with whom he summers with in Seaside, but "nobody talks about it," he says. "It's never mentioned. That's the mentality still for Italian families - homosexuality isn't OK."

-- NICK STERGIOPOULOS

Previously > CNN's Soledad O'Brien Hearts Gays Too