Don Lemon Compares Mitt Romney Marriage Comments To George Wallace Segregation Comments (VIDEO)

CNN's Don Lemon compared Mitt Romney to infamous segregationist governor George Wallace on his Sunday show.

Lemon said that Romney's recent comments opposing gay marriage could "come back to haunt him" just as Wallace's support for Jim Crow had become a millstone around his neck.

"I'm going to tick a whole lot of people off here," he said at the start of the segment. He then played a clip of Wallace uttering the notorious words, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever."

"Honestly, can you imagine having uttered those words in front of television cameras or being one of those people in the crowd cheering on Alabama's governor George Wallace?" Lemon said. "That wasn't so long ago. It was the 1960s. Now think about how far we have come, and think about what this might sound like a few decades from now."

A clip of Romney defining marriage as "a relationship between one man and one woman" followed.

Lemon was quick to say that he was not "singling out" Romney, and he focused most of the rest of his words on the black community, playing clips of people saying they were "hurt" and "disappointed" with President Obama for endorsing gay marriage.

"Do you really want to be less accepting than the man many of you thought cold hearted, vice president Dick Cheney?" he said.

Lemon concluded by saying that Wallace eventually "recognized his own ignorance, his own bigotry and his own hatred." Presumably addressing Romney as well as African Americans opposed to gay marriage, he said of Wallace, "It took him almost to the end of his life decades to get there to do it, so I will simply ask, when it comes to this marriage rights issue, do you really want to wait that long?"