Fox News Radio reporter Todd Starnes equated New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo with arch-segregationist Bull Connor, distorting recent remarks by Cuomo to falsely suggest that the Democratic governor wants to “politically segregate the state.”

Speaking with a reporter on January 17, Cuomo decried right-wing politicians who have opposed his policies in support of LGBT equality, abortion rights, and gun safety. Characterizing the Republican Party as riven by a schism between moderates and conservatives, Cuomo said that dynamic was playing out in New York:

The Republican Party candidates are running against the SAFE Act -- it was voted for by moderate Republicans who run the Senate! Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that's who they are and they're the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that's not who New Yorkers are. 

While Cuomo explicitly referred to “Republican Party candidates” and said in the same interview that it's “fine” for people to disagree with him, right-wing commentators instantly mischaracterized the governor's comments to claim that he wished to rid the state of all conservatives. Starnes, in a January 20 FoxNews.com column titled “Governor Andrew 'Bull Connor' Cuomo,” reacted with characteristic hyperbole and misinformation:

Get out of New York!

That's the message Empire State Governor Andrew Cuomo is sending to pro-life, pro-gun, pro-traditional marriage conservatives.

[...]

Take that in for just a moment. New York's Democratic governor believes people who are pro-life are extremists. Extremists.

Donald Trump? Not welcome. Cardinal Dolan -- you're outta here, pal. Cuomo just can't have those kind of people living on the streets of New York City.

When did Governor Cuomo become Bull Connor -- trying to politically segregate the state?

What's he going to do next, unleash the dogs and turn the hoses on conservative boys and girls?

Even yours truly, could be forced find a new place to live. I live among the intolerant liberal people of Brooklyn. I'm also a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association and an evangelical Christian.

It's only a matter of time before the governor's foot soldiers knock on my door and give this gun-toting, Bible-clinging, son-of-a-Baptist the heave ho.

Starnes' column is merely the latest example of his willingness to make baseless claims of anti-Christian persecution in order to justify his own bigoted views. As Fox's in-house mouthpiece for anti-gay hate groups, Starnes views every gain for LGBT equality as an assault on religious liberty. He has claimed that “Christians are trading places with homosexuals” since the repeal of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell.” He has defended anti-LGBT business discrimination, writing that non-discrimination protections are efforts to replace “God's law” with “man's law.” When the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Starnes tweeted, “Supreme Court overrules God” and predicted that it "[w]on't be long before they outlaw the Bible as hate speech."

Starnes' anti-Cuomo diatribe might be typical of his previous work, but equating the governor with Connor, the Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety who sanctioned brutal attacks against civil rights activists and presided over “the most segregated city in America,” marks a deplorable low for a reporter whose history of race-baiting exposes his own ugly bigotry.