American Idol eighth-season runner-up Adam Lambert has finally formally confirmed what everyone but in-denial viewers already knew: he's gay.

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"I don't think it should be a surprise for anyone to hear that I'm gay," Lambert told Rolling Stone in a cover story interview in this week's issue of the magazine.

According to Lambert, he had originally considered confirming his sexuality immediately after American Idol's eighth-season concluded last month but then decided to -- as has been rumored for two weeks now -- wait until the Rolling Stone interview.

"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,'" Lambert told the magazine.

"I didn't want the Clay Aiken thing and the celebrity-magazine bullshit. I need to be able to explain myself in context," Lambert added, referring to second-season Idol runner-up Clay Aiken's decision to "come out" and finally confirm years of widespread belief about his sexuality in a "Yes, I'm Gay" cover story with People magazine in 2008. 

Unlike Aiken's People cover, Lambert's Rolling Stone cover is titled "Wild Idol: The Liberation of Adam Lambert" and doesn't make any specific mention of his sexual orientation.

"I'm proud of my sexuality," Lambert told Rolling Stone. "I embrace it. It's just another part of me."

However Lambert -- who was considered to be Idol's eighth-season overwhelming frontrunner but ended up losing the season's title to Kris Allen -- told Rolling Stone he's currently focused on launching his recording career, not his sexuality.

"I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader," he said.

Lambert told the magazine he decided to try out for Idol's eighth season following a "drug-fueled" epiphany at Burning Man, the annual event held in Nevada's Black Rock desert.

"I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make happen," he said.  "I knew that it was my only shot to be taken seriously in the recording industry, because it's fast and broad."

But once he got on the show, Lambert said he had to deal with a problem he hadn't forseen -- an attraction to Allen, his roommate throughout the show's finals.

"I was like, 'Oh, (bleep), they put me with the cute guy. Distracting!'" Lambert told Rolling Stone, according to The Associated Press. "He's the one guy that I found attractive in the whole group on the show: nice, nonchalant, pretty and totally my type -- except that he has a wife. I mean, he's open-minded and liberal, but he's definitely 100 percent straight."
About The Author: Steven Rogers
Steven Rogers is a senior entertainment reporter for Reality TV World and been covering the reality TV genre for two decades.