Adam Lambert hesitated to speak out on gay rights, saying he did not set out to be a role model for LGBT youth.

The 30-year-old Lambert said he accepted the responsibility with a great deal of reluctance.

“At the beginning I was a little bit like, 'I don't know what to say, I don't know how to be that role model,' even though, all of a sudden, people are telling me I am,” Lambert said in a video interview with Billboard.com.

“One of the things I find very gratifying now is that I have grown a lot more comfortable with my position and I'm embracing the opportunity to be able to address this stuff through music.”

“There's not just one type of gay person,” he added, “and that's the hardest part about being one of the few in the public eye. I'm not the guy next door, necessarily. I dress kinda crazy, I'm a little bit more in-your-face about some of my instincts, and I’ve gotten a certain amount of flak for that because I get the sentiment of 'you're not representing us in a way that's going to help us integrate and help outside society accept us.'”

He added that artists “are supposed to be individuals.”

Lambert described his sophomore album Trespassing as a “post-gay statement” on life and love that everyone can relate to. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page. Visit our video library for more videos.)