I hate posting this. Not the article, but the fact that I have to post this ONLY on my humor site. It was acceptable to dedicate an entire article to my penis on my marketing site , but defending a homosexual male is a no no. It’s f*d up, its wrong, and as a business guy, it‘s career suicide in my line of work to do any different. So, I apologize. 

Dec. 20: Addendum to this, I wrote this article about 2 weeks ago and parked it, not sure if I should post it or not.  But screw it. Life is short. Some things are worth fighting for.

Onto the story…

I’m sitting here waiting for my Warcraft server to come back online after the 3.3 patch. I‘ve been waiting all day, so I thought I would write an article to keep myself occupied. I could be doing work, but I have been networking like a madman for the last few weeks, and have 4 more networking events planned before Friday, so I’m taking a breather. Besides, the 15,000 of you that come to check out my stuff each month deserve an update every once and a while. J Thanks for sticking in there.

Normally, I wouldn’t be writing about music in general, never mind American Idol contestants, but I have been recently troubled by my own reaction to the Adam Lambert scandal.

If you are a reader of my stuff, you know that I fervently support gay rights, gay marriage, gay whatever. Yes I am straight and married, but not so straight that I can’t have a man crush on Christian Bale. Having my particular brand of humor and just-short-of-a-caricature public persona also allows me to say things like that with zero hesitation… while I would guess than many a male would secretly agree, they still publicly deny the same.

In my case, I could pretty much tell my friends that I just blew a St. Bernard and they wouldn’t be surprised….and I love them for that J

The controversy skinny

In case you are not familiar with the Adam Lambert scandal, basically it went like this: Adam is an openly gay male - Not a big deal. He performed on the American Music Awards and in his performance open mouth kissed a dude and had a male dancer bob his head in his crotch - apparently a HUGE deal.

That performance sent the dirt pubs screaming, public outrage ensued, and as a result ,ABC cancelled his following day appearance on Good Morning America. Said performance was quickly snached up and moved to CBS for the Early Show instead where ratings neither increased or decreased as a result. They just stayed about the same.

Pro-Lambertians Take

The supporters of the performance say that is was no different from what happens every day on TV between 2 chicks. And they are right. While the Madonna/Britney kiss at the VMA’s did stir up a little excitement, it didn’t exactly stir up a whole lot of controversy…and that was like 10 conservative years ago. (As a side note, Christina Aguilerra was on the other side of Madonna and shared a kiss immediately after Britney…but nobody seems to remember that…weird) These days, girl on girl is so overdone that it’s not even worth mentioning, never mind petitioning the FCC.

Anti-Lambertians Take

The usuals crawled out of the woodwork to chime in calling the performance tasteless, inappropriate, degrading, perverted, and basically the last and final sign of the apocalypse (which according to John Cusack won’t happen for another 3 years…so I don’t think we need to worry about that right now.) If I had the time, I would love to research how many of those same people complained over every single girl/girl kiss on TV since the Madonna/Britney incident.

 

 Just a quick search of the web resulted in this actual FCC complaint filed by the Liberty Council on charges of “..indecent homosexual content”…

Note: not idecent sexual content, but indecent homosexual content. Apparently guy/girl indecent content, indecent portrayal of sexual acts, and the fore-mentioned blowing of a canine are acceptable. Just no fags.

Apparently the irony of the definition of Liberty is lost on the folks at the Liberty Council. Kind of like Hitler calling the Third Reich the “Equality Movement.”

 

The other critics say that he only did it for the shock value and has no true talent. Well duh! Of course he did it for the shock value. Performers perform. (Hence why my tour entitled “old dude on chair reading a book” never really took off like I hoped it would)

Why exactly do you think Madonna kissed Britney (and Christina) at the VMA’s? To find out what flavor toothpaste she used?

The talent portion is bunk however. Even if you think he has no talent as a singer (which, as a musician of 30 years myself, I think he does) the fact that you are even talking about him proves he has talent as a performer. Neener. Circular argument.

My take

This is where I have been struggling. I think as a whole what Lambert did was a GOOD thing. There is no reason for the guy/girl gayness double standard. Hopefully his performance opened the door for other performers to do the same, take it to the next level, and finally come to a point where it is so commonplace as to be uneventful. Just like drunken sorority girls making out in a bar. Been there. Got the tshirt. You’re “wild and edgy” I get it.

And now my admission…

I try to think of myself as supportive and open minded, but if I am being completely honest, I have to admit - The Lambert video kinda made me go “ewww.”

As I thought about it, 2 dudes kissing, even fantastically good looking ones, make me go eww. Yes me! The gayest straight person you probably know. Conceptually I’m fine with it, but the visual is just… yuck.

If you think you are not the same (and I know many of my readers are female, so you don’t have to worry about being branded but you will have the same reaction)

Imagine this visual.

And alas, therein lies the rub.

The problem for Adam

If we follow the logical assumption that Adam was doing this for shock value (to ultimately increase interest in him)and not for political advancement in a Ghandi-esque type of way, I think it misfired. What he didn’t take into consideration is the undeclared “ewww factor” that exists in our society even among the homo-firendly. When Britney and Madonna kissed, most people were like “that’s kinda hot.” It made me want to watch it again, and perhaps made me more interested in them.

However when I saw Adam attempt to swallow his keyboard players face, I kinda cringed. I actually had to look away from the screen for a sec the same way I do when they are opening up a decomposed body on “Bones.” And I can’t imagine that was his desired effect. And this was me sitting alone, not guys in group macho-ing it up and deathly terrified their buddies ascertain that they are cool with anything homosexual lest they be branded a fag-lover or worse, one themselves.

Side note; Using the word “lest” or “ascertain” in a sentence on guy-night will often have the same result.

The difference between Adam Lambert, and Madonna/Britney

I think the difference between the Madonna/Britney event and the Lambert event is that the majority of people thought that 2 girls making out was hot BEFORE oldie and the bald one did it on national television. It’s not like nobody ever though of it before (trust me, I though about it pretty much every day from the age of 12 on) They just added the edge that they were both famous, attractive, and reportedly straight.

And while I think we have come a tremendous way within a short time period on gay rights, I just don’t think that the world is ready just yet to think that guy on guy kissing is hot. I know for a fact that homosexuality was not only commonplace but encouraged in many civilized countries before the invention of the catholic church and the condemning of all things fun as as sin by people like Saint Augustine who prior to his “enlightment“ was a sometimes gay, often drunken, man-slut himself (You can hate me, but its true….look it up) But right here, right now, I just don’t think many people, guy or girl, think that man-kissing is sexy.

Is it wrong? Of course. Is it fair? Of course not. Is it the way it is? Yep.

For now.

Going Forward

I am going to attempt to find the err in my ways, but I don’t think its gonna happen anytime soon. There are still just too many taboos on the guy side. If you are not a guy, you have NO IDEA about how much pressure there is to not be gay. Or do anything gay, know anything gay, know anyone gay, or be perceived as gay. It’s basically the grown man version of Cooties. And about as mature. All I can say is that out dudes must have some stone f*n thick skin.

For Lambert, I stand by my argument that it was a good thing. If nothing else, it gets the discussion in people faces. A few years down the road we will probably see Dude Gaga complete with paint on pants, strobe lights, guy on girl, girl on girl, guy and guy, and maybe a monkee.

If the world is at all a fair and just place, in a decade it will be so commonplace as to deem uneventful. By then the world will be looking for the next shocking thing to disgust them… and you know what will inevitably come next.

　

2 dudes and cup.

　

　

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHA.

Made you make the vomit face again didn’t I?