In a new It Got Better video, out
singer Adam Lambert says he realized at an early age that he “was
not wired the same way as most of the other boys.”
“I think it was sixth grade when I
started realizing, 'Okay, I'm not wired the same way as most of the
other boys,'” Lambert said in the 8-minute video.
“Slowly but surely, I felt guilty
about it and I felt ashamed of it. 'Cause I didn't understand how to
be that. You know when you're a kid and you don't have any examples,
where there's nothing really on TV, none of the other kids in class
that you know of are identifying that way, teachers really aren't
talking about it. It makes you feel like an outsider, for sure. The
next three years was definitely me feeling in school like a loner a
lot of the time.”
Will and Grace helped.
“Will and Grace lightened the
whole topic up,” Lambert said. “I think being around the TV with
my parents on the couch and us all laughing at the same jokes allowed
me to kind of feel comfortable with them and made me realize, 'This
is probably going to be okay with them.'”
His mother asked whether he's gay. “It
was as if a ton of bricks had been lifted off my shoulders,”
Lambert said.
When he told his father, he answered,
“Yeah, yeah. We know.”
“It was so funny because in my head
as a teenager it seemed like such a big deal. And then when it all
kind of finally happened I was like, 'That was easy.'”
Lambert publicly came out in a 2009
Rolling Stone cover story.