Thu. May 26, 2016
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.
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