Gay "American Idol" runner-up Adam Lambert (touted by fans as "Glambert") knows he'll have a sympathetic ear at National Public Radio. On Sunday night's All Things Considered newscast, anchor Guy Raz promoted Lambert's latest album as a "great record."
As the interview drew to an end, Raz must have tried his hardest to craft the softest, slightly stupid-sounding question about the lyrics, which protest the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality. "I wonder whether you're addressing that issue"?
RAZ: I'm speaking with the singer Adam Lambert. His new record is called "Trespassing," and it's in stores now. The last track on the record is called "Outlaws of Love." And in it, you sing: "Nowhere to grow old. We're always on the run. You say we'll rot in Hell. Well, I don't think we will. They've branded us enough, outlaws of love."
You, of course, are gay. You're openly gay. I can't help but hear those lyrics and wonder whether you're addressing that issue or a memory of that.
LAMBERT: Yeah. And when I wrote that song, I wrote it with two very talented people: BC Jean, who's our writer, and a guy named Rune Westberg, who's a great producer. And we all kind of -- we started putting our thinking caps on about what we wanted to write about. There had been a lot going on with, you know, the gay marriage, kind of going back and forth in California [with Proposition 8].
And I was talking to them about being a member of the gay community, because neither of them are gay, and just expressing some of my frustration with the situation. And it just made me sad. And so I wanted to write something about that sadness, about that feeling where sometimes it's like a hopelessness that kind of comes over you when you look at the situation, how you're probably not going to change these people's minds because they're set.
LAMBERT: (Singing) Everywhere we go we're looking for the sun. Nowhere to grow old, we're always on the run. You say we'll rot in Hell, well, I don't think we will. You've branded us enough, outlaws of love.
NPR never minds laying down the message that traditional Christians are intolerant bigots. Raz couldn't ask "So, tell me how the Bible is a silly book that's wrong for anyone to read?" So it's just implied.
