Adam Lambert, snake, butterfly make cover of 'Rolling Stone'

The long awaited cover story of Adam Lambert and his coming out party for Rolling Stone won't officially hit newsstands until this Friday, but the publication's Web site put up the cover and a few highlights from Adam's interview for an early teaser. After months of empty speculation, people no longer have to stress out over his sexuality. In fact, this is the most obvious outing of an Idol since, well, Clay Aiken's People cover story last year.

Read an excerpt below from the recap RS published on its site earlier today:

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.

But as many will undoubtedly try to use his coming out for political reasons, Adam clearly wants to move ahead with his career:

“I’m trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader,” he says.

Joining Adam on the extremely glammed up cover (shot by Matthew Rolston) are a strategically placed green snake and butterfly, which are pretty unnecessary and play into the boundary-pushing that can come off as feeling cheap and tasteless.

There is also video of a behind the scenes look at Adam and his photo shoot with RS, which can be read along with the rest of the summary of the article on the magazine's Web site.

For the full scoop, be sure to check out Rolling Stone's issue out Friday.