So Adam Lambert performed at the AMA’s last night, and completely ignored the cardinal rule for gay artists: don’t let them see you acting gay.
The quality of his vocals and music aside, the same performance by Madonna, Britney or Christina wouldn’t have raised many eyebrows. Given the double standard for gay artists, however, the backlash is looking nothing short of epic. 10,000 tweets within moments of the performance brought “Lambert” to the top of Twitter’s trending list, and the vehemence of many tweets left no doubt that the far right has finally discovered Twitter.
In the gay blogosphere, the LGBT community left me with no doubt that the gays’ penchant for disdain and dismissal of anyone less than brilliantly talented is alive and thriving. Never mind the fact that the main stream (right wing) media is gearing up to marginalize or destroy yet another gay peformer – the gays cannot get past the fact that Lambert considers himself a musician and not an activist, not to mention freaking out over his less-than-stellar vocals. God knows that we gays would rather die than be associated with mediocrity, never mind that we’re all in this together. Never mind that – especially in the eyes of the nation’s youth – Adam Lambert is all of us, and holding gay artists to a double-standard is just another indicator that we’re freaks.
How can the gay community not see Adam Lambert for what he is? Adam is one of the most powerful voices for equality in this decade – not in spite of his use of a microphone and lyrics instead of a megaphone and slogans, but because of it! As I said in my last post (coincidentally also featuring Lambert), LGBT activists seem to be losing sight of where we are trying to go, and what we’re seeking to build. Instead of celebrating the fact that a very, very gay performer had the honor of performing at the AMAs, we’re bashing his performance. Instead of defending him when the right-wing media complex calls his performance inflammatory or shocking, we skulk off by ourselves and debate his talent.
Pathetic.
