By now you’ve heard about Adam Lambert’s performance on the American Music Awards.  The big controversy, as reported by the mainstream media, was 1) Adam Lambert kissed his boy keyboardist during the performance and 2) The next day, CBS chose to blur the screen during the kiss and then immediately showed the infamous Britney Spears/Madonna lip lock without censor. 

So why the censors for Adam Lambert?  As Lambert pointed out in an interview on CBS This Morning, women like Madonna and Britney Spears have being doing this sort of thing for a long time.  They’ve taken their share of heat, but as far as I can tell, their shenanigans were never blurred out for being obscene. Women can be sex(ual) and sexually provocative as long as the straight guys can chuckle like Beavis and Butthead and mumble, “C-c-oool”.  Madonna laying one on Britney Spears works as heterosexual porn for straight guys.

Adam Lambert is anything but porn for straight guys.  He is loud and proud about having homo desire and showed us something we haven’t seen on mainstream television—a really sexy, sexual, out, and unapologetic queer boy spreading his queer love all around to girls and boys.  Houston, we have a problem.  Suddenly, the straight guys wonder if he’s talking to them because every sexual thing we see on television is usually addressed to them.  

And it wasn’t just the kiss.  Have you seen Lambert’s whole performance?  Yeah, he kisses a boy, but from my perspective, the kiss was the cherry on top of what was a rather scrumptious, overtly sexual, and decidedly queer cake.  Far from being eye candy playing to straight masculine desire (like Britney and Madonna before and during the kiss), Adam Lambert sings, “I’m here for your entertainment…I’m in control…can you handle what I’m about to do…”  “Can you handle what I’m about to do?”  Can you handle seeing queer boys kiss?  Can you handle watching a queer boy on the receiving end of fellatio from a boy dancer, finger-fuck a girl dancer, and find himself sandwiched in a 3-way with a girl dancer in front and a boy dancer coming at him from behind?  Can you handle all of this lyrically and visually saturated with S&M?  Oh, hell yes I can handle it!  Bring it!  Whew!  Is it hot in here, or is it just me?

And therein lies the problem.  It is me.  I, and my queer were so gloriously hailed by Adam Lambert’s performance.  Though I didn’t care for the song, I loved the performance precisely because it was so sexual and so queer.  But the thing that makes me hot and bothered makes the straight guys go “Ewe.”  I, and others who desire queer masculinities don’t run the show at CBS; straight guys do.  Might the definition of “obscene” in this instance be that which makes straight men feel icky?  

Lambert was right when he said in the CBS interview that there is a double standard--one for women and one for gay men.   Like the other double standard that says it’s okay for men to be horny but not for women, this double standard--one for straight women and another for gay men, is all about giving straight guys what they want and keeping the straight male gaze and hetero-masculine privilege safely in place.