Adam Lambert is opening up about his queer identity and the people who helped him become the outspoken LGBTGQ+ advocate he is today.
“I come from a household of very opinionated people,” Lambert, 43, exclusively told Us Weekly on September 27 while attending the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park.
“My brother’s opinionated, I’m opinionated, my dad’s opinionated, my mom is,” he continued. “We used to debate a lot. It was just that kind of a family. There were no off-limit subjects. We were always kind of like, ‘Let’s talk about it!’ I thank my parents and my family for challenging me to think deeper and outside of the box.”
The singer, who rose to fame while competing in the hit reality singing competition American Idol in 2008, officially came out in 2009 via an article in Rolling Stone after speculation about the singer’s sexuality circulated online.
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In 2023, Lambert told People that while he came out publicly in 2009, he had been out to his friends and family for eight years — long before he auditioned for and took the American Idol stage.
“I was very comfortable and secure with who I was,” he told the publication at the time. “It was never a secret. During the live broadcast, there was no one asking me what my sexual preference was, and we weren’t allowed to do interviews during the show back then because they wanted everyone on a level playing field.”
Weeks after the finale aired, which saw Lambert finishing as the runner-up to Kris Allen, pictures of the singer kissing another man quickly circulated online — an experience the singer told People left him feeling “ashamed.”
“It was like going backwards in some ways,” he said, before adding that ultimately his time on American Idol and the speculation regarding his sexuality “made me stronger and informed the kind of art that I wanted to make.”
Shortly after he came out in Rolling Stone, Lambert performed at the 2009 American Music Awards. During the performance, he memorably kissed his male keyboard player on the lips.
“I remember doing an interview shortly after the show and them blurring my mouth as they replayed the clip,” Lambert recalled to People. “But they showed Madonna and Britney Spears kissing [at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards] without any censor. It was such a double standard.”
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Lambert told Us on September 27 that he knew “early on” that there weren’t a lot of openly gay or queer representations in the entertainment industry.
“It was pretty early on when I realized that my identity, and this was in like 2010 when I first started, my identity as a queer person was not something that was heavily represented in mainstream media,” he explained. “I just felt like, ‘Oh, no one else is saying that, so I’m going to say that.’ It felt really good to be a part of that first big wave within mainstream culture here in the United States of getting people to understand it all a little bit better.”
He continued, “Even now, there’s a lot of misinformation and fear being thrown around. If you actually take the time to do some research and get to know somebody that’s of a different group than you’re a part of, I think you learn a lot.”
