The DAN ZONE

So, Adam Lambert got down and dirty during his performance on the American Music Awards last night, making Madonna mopping the floor with a wedding dress in 1984 on the MTV Music Awards look like an adaptation of Cinderella. Sure, she kissed a couple of younger girls (Britney and Christina) a few years ago and set off some sparks with her cradle robbing lesbian antics, and under age Miley Cyrus recently did a pole dance on stage, but we really haven’t seen the kind of backlash Adam is receiving since Janet dropped her boob bomb during the Super Bowl. Ironically, while Adam’s under attack for putting a man’s face to his crotch, Janet also performed on the show last night, and did her classic dance move during “If” in which she reaches through one of her male dancer’s legs and grabs his crotch, but there hasn’t been a peep about that. Of course, she was merely simulating straight sexuality without any boob bombs this time, and there was just that one instance of choreographed crotch action. Adam, on the other hand, also managed to have a couple of young scantily clad men crawling along the floor like dogs while attached to his leash. But really, anyone who’s seen the many YouTube clips posted during the American Idol season in an effort to ruin Adam’s chance at the win is well aware that Adam does drag, dances provocatively with and touches other nearly naked men during his performances, and even kisses other men. So when I watched that performance, I didn’t feel like I was seeing anything I hadn’t seen before.

I don’t quite understand how those managing Adam’s career allowed him to do that crotch move, though. Perhaps it wasn’t in the plans, just a little something he and his dancer came up with to shock the nation and get Adam some free publicity (it worked). Or maybe his dancer was merely trying to fix a wardrobe malfunction. That’s it! He was crawling on the floor at eye level with Adam’s crotch, noticed that Adam’s zipper was down, and was just trying to zip it back up…with his teeth. Either way, Adam’s career is off to a complicated start. I mean, the song he was singing was pretty much a message to his American Idol fan base that he’s not the sweet angel they thought he was (or that he pretended to be to stay on the show?). He’s actually a dirty boy who is going to make you blow. Yeah, the lyrics were something along that line if I remember correctly.

The ironic thing is, Adam has really pulled the wool (of the crotch of his pants) over the eyes of the gay magazine The Advocate. Adam has been under fire from the magazine since doing an interview with them, because they were told by his people what questions they could not ask him, many of which had to do with gay issues. The magazine basically charged Adam with not living up to his involuntary role as a role model for other gays, instead choosing to be silenced and mainstreamed. I guess Adam showed The Advocate who is master. And I hope he doesn’t apologize for his performance, no matter how much of a risk it was so early in his career (let’s not forget, so was Madonna’s wedding dress move when she performed).

But Adam can’t win. He’s already turned off the more conservative straight folk He’s got gay publications after him. And even the gay masses have words for him. In reaction to his performance last night—which was so controversial it seems to have clogged everyone’s ears to the fact that he and pretty much every other performer on the show was rarely singing on key—many gays have taken to the message boards to trash talk him for disgracing the gay community, being a horrible representative for the entire community, and even being one of the major reasons why gays aren’t allowed to get married.

Ah. So there it is. Divide and conquer. And the gay community is allowing it to happen. Okay, so maybe the gayest and most flamboyant of gays most often get the spotlight in the media. But from where I stand, someone who expresses himself like Adam has just as much of a right to get married as I do. Adam Lambert is no more or less a poster child for gay marriage as the rest of us, but fellow gays seem to think that he is the one example of ‘gay’ that all straight people will refer to when casting their votes. What about Ellen DeGeneres? Melissa Etheridge? Neil Patrick Harris? T.R. Knight? These famous people don’t project themselves as the type of ‘freak’ many choose to label Adam as, yet many in the mainstream still have an issue with gay marriage.

Self-compartmentalizing and segregating does the gay community a huge disservice, with certain members of the community refusing to identify with the others. Infighting is an age old sociological flaw that weakens every minority. Darker complexioned African-Americans have discriminated against lighter complexioned African-Americans relentlessly. Jews who could pass for Aryan not only used it to their advantage to escape persecution during the Holocaust, but worked as snitches to turn in other Jews. In the U.K., Protestants and Catholics, religions that are both meant to honor God, goodness and loving one another, have instead turned on each other viciously in a never-ending clash. The Jets and the Sharks were two gangs who both wanted to sing, dance and bring down Officer Krupke, yet they refused to do it in harmony!

The truth is, those gays who complain about the flamboyant type like Adam are the ones most likely to have NO voice—the ones who completely assimilate into society and remain its little secret. Sure, it’s great to ‘fit in,’ but anonymous blending in doesn’t make change happen. Just ask all the drag queens who began the gay rights movement at the Stonewall Inn way back in 1969.