COULD James Adomian become the first man to break through as an openly gay stand-up star?

The thought popped into my head as he performed last month in front of an almost entirely male audience at the Rockbar, on Christopher Street. In a hat, with a confident, wry smile and a thin mustache, Mr. Adomian, whose debut album “Low Hangin Fruit” (Earwolf) was released on Monday, is a casually handsome performer who doesn’t come across as clearly gay or straight. He has a low-boiling energy onstage — confident, jaunty but not aggressive — and his set features solidly constructed, verbally playful jokes enlivened by an uncanny ability to channel a subway crowd or a larger-than-life character.

Leaning into the microphone and looking ready to pounce, Mr. Adomian, 32, imagined what Disney World would be like in New York by transforming into a Type A shouter whose every second is defined by pointless urgency: “I want to be in Tomorrowland yesterday!” He did several sharp minutes about how popular villains always have characteristics that read gay, including a persuasive argument that the Transformers sound like catty, enraged drag queens (“Megaaaatron! Shut up, Starscream!”). His parody of crowd work killed: “So,” he shouted in a life-of-the-party voice. “Who’s in the closet?”

Revealingly, this joke did just as well two days earlier at a straight bar in the East Village. There were small changes, like specifying at Rockbar that an accent was from someone straight, but the sets were remarkably similar. This consistency is its own argument: Just as some stand-up comics have achieved mass appeal with highly specific ethnic or racial points of view, a polished set from a gay perspective could do the same. The response was equally loud in both rooms.

Homophobia has long been a part of mainstream comedy, but attitudes have changed radically since 1983, when Eddie Murphy opened the concert film “Delirious” with a long gay-panic riff that included a joke about worrying about getting AIDS from a woman who kissed a gay man. Mr. Murphy expressed regret for that bit many years later, and last year Tracy Morgan took just a week to apologize for what was widely seen as an antigay rant in a show in Nashville.