Adam Lambert is hitting the post-American Idol circuit; fielding questions about his singing styles, his idols and of course his sexual orientation. There's always an odd sense to me when the question is asked, which goes back to my first years on the next. Back when Compuserve and Prodigy were the big guys on the internet access block, I was on both of their systems and had quite an eye opening discussion about the comparison between the civil rights movement between blacks and homosexuals. Far from the flame wars that can erupt today, the discussion I had between people were quite thoughtful, provocative and helped me understand a lot more about the struggles homosexuals face without the rights many of us fought and died for.

One big issue we had in our discussions had to do with outing. Black people can't hide who they are. When you see a black person walking down the street, any preconceived notions you have about black people are going to be front and center. With homosexuality, unless the person is very flamboyant you aren't going to know their orientation unless they tell you. That brings up a curiosity factor in people, because they want to have some sort of starting block to work with and if they assume one thing then find out something else, it can mess up with their preconceived notions.

Because I'm black and my build, people all the time assume I played sports or follow sports. I get questions about players or teams and honestly I normally have no idea who or what they're talking about. The assumption is because I'm black I should know sports. Now I know in most cases people aren't using that against me, they're just trying to make conversation. Sure, you ask a majority of men and they're going to have a favorite team or player to talk about. That just isn't me.

When you see someone like Adam Lambert, with his mascara, dark hair and black fingernail polish, the first reaction is he must be gay. I have no doubt he's gay but he hasn't said he is gay. He gives the ambiguous answer, which only plays more into the 'he must be gay' radar, but I know many non-gay men who wear mascara, dark hair and have black fingernails. They're into the goth scene, so while I can probably agree with most people that Adam is gay, my experience tells me there is another plausible explanation.

I've run across a number of articles this past week talking about gay issues and a few come across the outing aspect. The reason why I delved into this article I'm writing, after being full of the American Idol dust ups that have happened, was precisely because there seems to be a lot of people who want to drag Adam kicking and screaming out of the closet, yet no information I've seen presented clearly states he's gay. It's at once they want to say he's gay, presume he's gay, but won't stick their neck out to say he's gay because they want to respect his privacy. I didn't see it but there was an article about Kara DioGuardi, one of the judges of American Idol, appearing on The View who outed the guy, but in reading the transcript it was a tortured dance of yes and no about him being gay.

The big point is this all shouldn't matter, but being the people and society we are it will matter. People may claim they don't want to know but they do want to know and will continue to probe and ask the question of those they think are homosexual.