Adam Lambert, the runner-up in this year’s American Idol competition, is featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine. As was widely expected, Lambert opens up in the coverstory titled Wild Idol: The Psychedelic Transformation and Sexual Liberation of Adam Lambert and comes clean about his much speculated-about sexuality … telling Rolling Stone that he doesn’t think “it should be a surprise for anyone to hear that [he's] gay”. On that account, I think he’s right. Here is Adam‘s RS coverphoto and a portion of his coverstory interview:

American Idol’s glamtastic runner-up Adam Lambert opens up in the next issue of Rolling Stone, speaking frankly about his sexuality, though he doesn’t think his revelation is particularly shocking. “I don’t think it should be a surprise for anyone to hear that I’m gay,” Lambert says in the new issue of Rolling Stone, hitting newsstands this week. The flamboyant Idol singer hits our cover and bares all, talking about his childhood (”I started to realize I wasn’t like every other boy,” he says), the drug-fueled Burning Man epiphany that led him to AI (”I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make happen,” he tells RS) and his run on the show (”I was like, ‘I’m going to glue rhinestones on my eyelids, bitch!’ “). And yes, he talks about his sexuality. “Right after the finale, I almost started talking about it to the reporters, but I thought, ‘I’m going to wait for Rolling Stone, that will be cooler,’ ” he tells us. “I didn’t want the Clay Aiken thing and the celebrity-magazine bullshit. I need to be able to explain myself in context. “I’m proud of my sexuality,” Lambert adds. “I embrace it. It’s just another part of me.” Ultimately, however Lambert tells RS contributor Vanessa Grigoriadis that there are other parts of his life that he’s trying to keep front and center. “I’m trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader,” he says. It was that mission — and his Burning Man “psychedelic experience” — that lead him to Idol after years in musical theater. “I knew that it was my only shot to be taken seriously in the recording industry, because it’s fast and broad,” he tells RS. He details his experience on Idol, his true thoughts on winner Kris Allen and how his sexuality impacted his Idol run in our cover story, “Wild Idol: The Psychedelic Transformation and Sexual Liberation of Adam Lambert,” which hits newsstands this week.

I’m happy to hear that Adam is proud of his sexuality and choosing to openly discuss a personal matter like that on the cover of a major magazine is pretty much proof of that fact. I completely understand why he wouldn’t want to talk about any of his personal biz while he was competing on American Idol. While it works to the advantage of some competitors to talk to the voting audience about their wife/husband and kids, we still live in an age where discussing your homosexuality would still work against you. In any event, it’s very cool that Adam is finally feeling free enough to talk about his life as openly and honestly as possible. After the jump, check out a few behind-the-scenes photos from Adam‘s Rolling Stone covershoot …

Adam talks with the mag a bit more in a behind-the-scenes video from the shoot which you can watch in full HERE. So … Adam‘s out, no one is surprised and now he can go about his biz of carrying on with his music career. I gotta say tho … I wonder what Kris Allen is feeling that his runner-up scored the cover of Rolling Stone magazine before he did.

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