Adam Lambert is Censored - Madonna and Britney Are Immortalized

Double Standard Censorship: What's Okay for Girls Isn't Okay for Boys

After American Idol finalist Adam Lambert kissed a boy during his performance at the 2009 American Music Awards, CBS network executives immediately blurred the image for all repeat broadcasts on their channel. But when Madonna kissed Britney Spears at the 2003 MTV Video Music awards, that 15 second girl-on-girl kiss was all we saw on the news for a month. And it was as clear as crystal. In fact some news networks slowed the footage down and enlarged it so we could see just how saucy (pornographic?) Britney and Madonna got during their open mouth smooch. They blurred Adam Lambert's kiss, but enlarged and enhanced Madonna and Britney's kiss. My point is: double standard censoring is alive and well.

Girls kissing girls on TV has become a lucrative business out in Hollywood, in part thanks to the award winning Showtime lesbian drama, The L-Word. But you will never see a show like The L-Word based on men, apparently. Mainstream society has become very comfortable with a girl kissing another girl. But obviously we are still not ready to see a boy kissing another boy on TV. Just ask Adam Lambert.

Tom Selleck kissed Kevin Kline in the 1997 movie In & Out. This movie received dozens of awards and nominations. Tom and Kevin were even awarded the MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss that year. The fact that both Tom Selleck and Kevin Kline are openly, and clearly, straight men didn't seem to matter. Despite receiving dozens of awards, unflattering reviews about the movie and its forbidden same sex kiss continued to pour out of the mainstream media, killing the buzz and prematurely sending the movie into home video status.