Adam Lambert makes surprise appearance to celebrate defenders of LGBTQ+ history in London

Singer Adam Lambert has once again held a torch for queer causes after making a surprise appearance at an event in London to mark LGBT+ History Month.

Lambert, 41, welcomed audiences to a special panel event presented by JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner Law (BCLP) on Thursday (23 February), with the singer using an introductory speech to reflect on his own experience as a gay man in the music industry and the continued importance of queer visibility.

The former American Idol star – who released his fifth studio album, High Drama, on Friday (24 February) and is set to play a headline show at London’s Royal Albert Hall in June – also paid tribute to the event’s panel of five LGBTQ+ figures whose tireless work is helping to bring queer history to audiences around the world.

Attendees heard from Joseph Galliano-Doig, co-founder and director of Queer Britain, and from filmmakers Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer, who co-directed award-winning documentary Cured, about the fight to get the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its manual of mental illnesses in the 1970s.

Over the course of the evening, both in person and online audiences also heard from lifelong LGBTQ+ rights campaigner and Stonewall Riots veteran Mark Segal, and Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center founder Diana Rodriguez shared what’s to come from the landmark museum when it opens next door to New York’s legendary Stonewall Inn in 2024.

The Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center will no doubt be hoping to emulate the success of the Queer Britain museum, which became the UK’s first dedicated LGBTQ+ museum when it opened in 2022 and has since welcomed more than 50,000 people through its doors in London, as well as being named ‘best small museum’ by the Museum Association.

Speaking to PinkNews, Galliano-Doig reflected on the importance of the site as well as ensuring LGBTQ+ history continues to form part of the conversation outside of LGBT History Month.

“I think the thing that really sums it up for me is how often we find people moved to tears in the space, and it’s simply a fact of feeling they’ve been reflected and they’ve been seen,” he said.

“When I look through the visitors’ books and when we talk to visitors, time and time again people are just grateful that there is finally a space for them, where their own heritage and history can be seen and appreciated and that we’re telling our own stories and not having our stories told for us.”

Discussing the tangible impact of initiatives aimed at celebrating queer stories, Galliano-Doig continued: “I think if LGBTQ+ kids can actually see that they’re from a set of communities that have done so much and hit above their wight in terms of what we’ve achieved – we’ve shortened wars, we’ve revolutionised music, we’ve been at the forefront of so many different arts movements.

“I think if you can instil that send of pride in people, you can show other kids that we’re more rounded than we’re often presented [as], and actually our histories and our lives are as valuable as anybody else’s around that table.”

Starting its first PRIDE business resource group in 1996, event host JPMorgan Chase & Co has become a leader in the global diversity, equality and inclusion sector after becoming one of the first global firms to create a full-time Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs dedicated to prompting change both inside and outside the company.

For Stonewall Riots veteran Mark Segal, 72, the event stands as a sign of deep institutional change that would have been unimaginable to him as an 18-year-old participating in the landmark LGBTQ+ fightback against police outside The Stonewall Inn more than half a century ago.

“That’s a grand room in there – I’m usually thrown out of rooms like that!” Mark joked to PinkNews before taking to the stage. “We used to demonstrate in rooms like that, because corporations wouldn’t open their doors to us. Today, they are.

“Why are they doing so? It’s because of all that work that everybody’s done for the last 53 years.”