Chris Harrison, host of the ABC reality
series The Bachelor, claims the franchise might suffer if it
featured a gay bachelor.
Harrison weighed in on the issue
roughly two months after Juan Pablo Galavis, the show's current
bachelor, created a stir and later apologized for calling gays more
“pervert" than straights.
(Related: Bachelor's
Juan Pablo Galavis says he would accept gay daughter.)
In an interview this week with The
New York Times Magazine, Harrison insisted that he is “100
percent for equality and gay marriage,” then suggested that
featuring a gay bachelor would not be a “good business decision.”
“The question is: Is it a good
business decision?” Harrison
rhetorically asked. “I just spoke at U.S.C. the other night,
and I explained it like this: Look, if you've been making pizzas for
12 years and you've made millions of dollars and everybody loves your
pizzas and someone comes and says, 'Hey, you should make hamburgers.'
Why? I have a great business model, and I don't know if hamburgers
are going to sell.”
“Is our job to break barriers, or is
it a business? That's not for me to answer,” he added.