OK, Adam Lambert is gay. Now what?

The days of "don't ask, don't tell" are over for Adam Lambert. Rolling Stone magazine has posted a preview of the cover story in which Lambert unabashedly confirms his homosexuality, and the excerpts online indicate that, from this day forward, this season's groundbreaking "Idol" expects the media and his fans to accept him for who he is, with neither scandalized whispers nor rainbow flag-waving rallies of support.

By making his calm, cool and collected stand in this particular magazine, Lambert indicates where he's going next as an artist and a celebrity. Striking a hot pose in a space more accustomed to the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kid Rock, the singer claims a spot for himself as an openly gay man within mainstream rock 'n' roll, which has always tempered gender-bending with heterosexual machismo.

Through forceful insinuation (tight pants, well-place brooches, singing "Whole Lotta Love" and "A Change Is Gonna Come") and the ongoing insistence that it didn't matter anyway, Lambert eased the pop-loving public into embracing him no matter whom he enjoyed embracing. He also played out another aspect of his ongoing revival of classic rock, whose prancing frontmen and women have always projected the kind of free-floating pheromone haze that confounds specific commitments.

Traditionally, rock deities don't commit to gender or type; their job is to open up a fantasy space in which any fan can imagine herself as both the object of desire and the star generating all that heat. Yet rock emerged before gay liberation, and though its fantasies might be pan-sexual, its stated realities are usually straight. Jagger, Joplin, Bowie, Prince, even moody Kurt Cobain: Each of these legendary names cultivated an aura of openness and fluidity that mirrors the sensual effect of their music. Lambert wants to join this group; doing so, he'd help bring its actual diversity out into the open. Now that he's signed his contract with the "Idol"-attached 19 management and RCA Records, he can start to focus on the goal.

Though it's definitely a media event, Lambert's interview with ace Rolling Stone reporter Vanessa Grigoriadis also seems like something to be gotten out of the way. Recently photographed holding hands with the fabulously named Errol Flynn look-alike Drake LaBry, Lambert has apparently returned to the West Hollywood-based life he lived before he became an Idol, just with many more paparazzi in tow.