Oh dear mercy. America: Get Real.

Let me preface this discussion with the fact that I didn't even know who Adam Lambert was until last Monday when the internet erupted in all this VMA controversy stuff. I don't listen to pop music, I don't like pop music, and I generally don't give a shit about pop-music, its stars or its controversies. However, this one really got my goat. 

 I was listening to the Adam Lambert interview on CBC's Q my way to school this morning.  I  have been following the controversy since reading about it on the Monday morning blogosphere following the VMAs (I don't have a TV so am staunchly dedicated to internet blogs for my info). Many things about this “controversy” have rattled me, but I will only comment on one in particular here. 

Q's host, Jian Gomeshi, asked him about an article posted on the Huffington Post which indicted Lambert for doing more to harm gay rights and the gay community with this performance than help it.  I found this extremely troubling.

The author of the article said Lambert's flashy-glam brand of homosexuality was too overt and in-your-face to be accepted by everyday America;  that it undermined those homosexuals who go to work in suits everyday and work to support their families and are traditional and conservative and want the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts. 

Is the author saying that only homosexuals who mimic heterosexuality by having a family, living in suburbia and going to work everyday deserve to be sheltered from discrimination based on orientation? Doesn’t this exact mimicry do nothing for gay rights but reinforce the heteronormative standard we as a society perpetually uphold when we discriminate against certain brands of speech based solely on orientation? To say Lambert’s expression of his sexuality is “too gay” to be respected and protected does more harm to the international discourse on gay rights than his performance ever could have. 

This Huffington article, and more generally, arguments rooted in this same way of thinking, further muffle the homosexual voice as a means of sexual expression.  This narrow view of homosexuality does nothing but buttress the further discrimination of homosexuals everywhere, whether they are teachers, lawyers, electricians, children of NHL coaches or artists. We either protect speech or we don't... we can't start picking and choosing which gay expressions we are going to allow and which we aren't.  Especially when that decision is based solely on the idea that those expressions which make us most uncomfortable --  by challenging our heteronormative world view --  will be cast out of the protected sphere whereas those expressions that manifest simply in a nice pair of loafers or well tailored suit will be allowed.