Luke Parker, the Christian contestant on this past season of “The Bachelorette” who got the boot from Hannah Brown after promoting a biblical view on premarital sex, claims that the show’s producers falsely edited his statements to twist him into some kind of villain.
Speaking on the faith-based YouTube channel “Paul and Morgan,” Parker said that he had no idea the producers were portraying him as the villain until they began asking him all types of questions in order to get him to say things that made him look bad.
“I really didn’t know I was being portrayed as the villain,” Parker said, as reported by Fox News. “I’m [a] pretty naive kind of guy. It didn’t – it took until Latvia, and that’s kind of where I knew it. I’m the villain.”
Parker added that he began to connect the dots the moment producers began “asking me these types of questions like, why are they trying to get me to say stuff like this.”
Several weeks prior to the finale, Hannah Brown accused Luke Parker of “slut-shaming” her and trying to control her body when he expressed his views on chastity.
“So, let’s talk about sex and how the marriage bed should be kept pure,” said Parker at the time. “I had an encounter with God. I was in the shower and God was speaking to me. I realized that I wasn’t the man that I wanted to be. And I’ve been working on being the husband that I want to be for my future wife.”
“I have had sex, and, honestly, Jesus still loves me,” said Brown.
Brown later argued that Parker’s views on premarital sex were tantamount to pride. “Guess what? Sex might be a sin out of marriage, [but] pride is a sin, too, and I feel like this is like a pride thing,” Brown said while eliminating Parker from the show. “I feel like I’ve finally gotten clarity on you, and I do not want you to be my husband.”
According to Luke, however, he and Hannah Brown had very fruitful conversations about faith and religion when they were off-camera. She even allegedly told him that “it’s imperative that [her future husband] has a strong relationship with God, and we’re talking about our relationship with God and how important it is to us, and I’m thinking, wow, this [relationship] is gonna work.”
On the night of the big conversation that turned Hannah Brown off, Luke says that the whole thing was deceptively edited.
“I laid out a few brief scriptures with her [then said] I’m going to abstain from sex before marriage because that’s what God’s best is for me. And she goes as far [as] to say, ‘Luke I share the exact same heart and the exact same convictions as you. We’re on the same page.’ So in my mind, I’m like, oh we’re good,” Parker said. “I wasn’t slut-shaming her [or] judging her, like, I actually went back to fight for her.”
“I still wanted to be with her at that moment, and I knew that she had done this regardless of the details,” Parker said in reference to her sleeping with other contestants. “I was just like, with the conversations that we’ve had that [didn’t] air, she’s telling me that she wants to [abstain]. So I’m thinking if she’s living this life and on this [other] path, then she’s making a mistake and I need to go say, ‘Hey look, like, you’re making a big mistake, like, you can’t send me home, like, I need some clarity here or some closure.'”