On The Men Tell All episode of The Bachelorette, Luke Parker attempted to redeem himself. Parker, the contestant whose attachment to his faith ultimately caused Hannah Brown to lose faith in their relationship, sat in an infamous hot seat that has arguably never been hotter, unwilling to offer any semblance of regret for his actions on the show.
This all came in the immediate aftermath of the airing of Parker’s return to the rose ceremony, after getting eliminated when he told Brown on their one-on-one date that she wasn’t allowed to have sex with the other men on the show. This prompted Brown to swiftly eliminate Parker, flashing a middle finger to the limousine as he rode away. Parker didn’t comprehend the message, unable to understand that shaming a woman for how and when she chooses to be intimate with others won’t lead to an engagement. When Parker arrived at the rose ceremony, the three remaining men stood up for Brown, and in one of the most legendary power moves in The Bachelorette history, Brown picked up the podium with the roses on it and moved it past a bewildered Parker.
During The Men Tell All episode - or “the Luke P. show” - as The Bachelorette so aptly described it, the other contestants, as well as fans in attendance who were overwhelmingly anti-Parker, saw his insistence on being a man of faith as a charade. At one point, fellow contestant Devin Harris joined Parker on the couch to try to put him in his place, explaining to him, “There are two types of men. There are men that want an independent, strong woman, and there are men that want women that they can control. I feel, right now, that you are the man that wanted to control women so that you could feel better about yourself.” The message didn’t stick with Parker, who claimed that he and Brown had conversations about her abstaining from sex during fantasy suites long before they reached that night. Parker said he brought Brown to his college church group during his hometown date, and there, he said Brown told the group she wouldn’t “use fantasy suites for sex.”
Parker took to the defense on Instagram (seen above) following Monday’s episode, saying in a lengthy 375-word post: “I had to go back and fight for her, I believed in my heart she was making the biggest mistake of her life.” The 24-year-old import/export manager said he went on the show because he thought that Brown’s religious views lined up with his, and was especially intrigued that she had respected that Colton Underwood was a virgin when she was on The Bachelor.
As Parker scrambled to reassemble an image he believes was shattered with selective editing that sought to paint him as the villain, he seemed to have dug himself a deeper hole in his inability to wrap his head around the reason he was wrong to say what he said on the fantasy suite date. Parker should have known what show he was signing up for, and better yet, he should have learned how to treat a woman before he used his personal beliefs as a crutch to explain why he thought it was acceptable to tell Brown what she could and couldn’t do with her body.
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The Bachelorette finale aired July 29 at 8pm on ABC.
Source: Luke Parker
