'Dancing With the Stars' Execs Considered Pairing Carson Kressley With a Man

While Chaz Bono has bore the brunt of this season’s Dancing With the Stars criticisms, many viewers wondered why Carson Kressley, an open gay male, would not be two-stepping with another male dancer in the competition.

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“We thought about it,” DWTS executive producer Conrad Green told E! Online about a potential same-sex pairing on the dance floor.

“We try to follow what happens in real ballroom competitions,” Green continued. “That was the original intention of the show. And while we are aware that there are same-sex couples, the competitions are usually mixed-gendered.”

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Kressley follows in the footsteps of Lance Bass, who put on a series of steamy numbers with Lacey Schwimmer in Season 7. The duo finished the competition in third place.

“It’s a performance, like actors,” Green explained. “We don’t think its odd pairing up dancers with incompatible sexual preferences, but based off abilities.”

Green spoke with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week about the public backlash regarding the show's inclusion of the transgender Bono. Fans of the show have flooded message boards in protest of the network's reported homosexual agenda.

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"What we try to do is reflect a broad range of the entertainment world in the casting of the show," Green told THR. "We're always trying to find new things that people haven't seen, new types of stories and that's what we've been doing this season."

"It's a fascinating story," he continued of Bono's public transformation from female, Chastity, to male, Chaz. "His life in the past few years and the changes that he's made in his life. He's got a really interesting story to tell and that's just one facet of it."

Kressley will team up with Anna Trebunskaya, who returns for her eighth year, when DWTS kicks off its 13th season on ABC Sept. 19. Bono will be paired with Schwimmer.