Friday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow lambasted conservatives who have suddenly found themselves enamored of Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin. She urged the right-wing figures who are currently slavering over the often-shirtless Russian president-for-life to “zip it up” and show some self-respect.

The town of Rockford, IL, she said, is home to the World Congress of Families, an anti-LGBT organization that is seeking to stem the tide of same sex marriage validation that is sweeping the country.

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“This group in Rockford, IL hosts international meetings every few years to do what they do,” explained Maddow, “to promote natural families that definitely are not gay.”

The group is going out of its way to have its 2014 meeting in Russia at the Kremlin to show its support of the recent spate of virulently anti-LGBT legislation that the country’s lawmakers have enacted.

Far-right gangs in Rome have started hanging banners of Putin around the city as a means of intimidating and harassing LGBT people and other groups.

Maddow said, “So as he’s becoming a hero to literally fascist groups, Russia under Putin is also becoming kind of a North Star for anti-gay forces here at home in the United States.”

Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality — a group that says same sex attraction is a curable illness — has endorsed Putin’s stance against “the negative lesson of american homosexual decadence.” Scott Lively, the American prosecuted for his role in authoring Uganda’s notorious “kill the gays” bill, has actually gone so far as to suggest the U.S. conservatives follow in the footsteps of Edward Snowden and emigrate to Russia.

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“Anti-gay activists in this country embracing Russia and the KGB’s on Vladimir Putin,” Maddow marveled. “This has been one of the weirder and more unexpected turns in our own domestic politics this year.”

“Both in Congress and in the Conservative media ‘peanut gallery’ have decided real Americans should show how much they love our country by maybe moving to Russia. Because Putin is the kind of strong and decisive leader that we want and we love,” she said.

She compared this collective man-crush on the part of the right wing to the point in the 2008 campaign when things got “a little NC-17” over then-vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. The National Review’s Rich Lowry said Palin was giving off “little starbursts” of sexual charisma through the television during the vice presidential debates.

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“It’s one thing for the right to fall in love with its own politicians,” Maddow said, “to make Reagan a saint, Sarah Palin their own collective girlfriend, but the president of Russia, he is not that into you. Seriously, I know you guys hate Pres. Obama, so it feels good to have a man-crush on somebody else, but this guy is the president of Russia. Zip it up, you guys, seriously. Have some respect.”

Watch the video, embedded below via MSNBC:

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