Satanists to turn Westboro founder 'gay' after death

A Satanist group says it intends to perform a ritual on Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps Snr after he dies to turn him gay in the afterlife.

The Satanic Temple pulled a similar trick on Phelps Snr's mother in 2013, conducting a "Pink Mass" at her tombstone that they said had turned her into a lesbian beyond the grave.

Two same-sex couples, one male and one female, engaged in "homoerotic activity" at the Mississippi gravesite of Catherine Johnston.

"After a Pink Mass has been performed, every time a same-sex couple kisses over a gravesite, the now-gay deceased is pleasured in the afterlife," claimed the Satanic Temple on its website.

Temple leader Lucien Greaves said at the time that the group would repeat the ritual when Phelps Snr died.

After Phelps Snr's estranged son Nathan recently claimed his 84-year-old father was on "the edge of death" in a Kansas hospice, the Temple confirmed a second Pink Mass will someday go ahead.

"I stated [in 2013] ... that I would be presiding over Fred’s own Pink Mass before too long," Greaves wrote to Vice.

"As I have made a promise to a dying man, I fully intend to do my very best to see it through, and the pomp and circumstance of this Pink Mass will surely far, far exceed that of the original event in Meridian, Mississippi."

The first Pink Mass was organised as a tongue-in-cheek protest against Westboro's plans to picket the funerals of victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.

The Westboro Baptist Church is notorious for protesting the funerals of soldiers and celebrities, bearing signs with slogans such as "God hates soldiers" and anti-gay messages.

The church claims the deaths are God's punishment for immorality and tolerance of homosexuality and abortion.

While offensive, the protests are protected under the United States constitution's right to free speech.

But the Satanic Temple says its Pink Mass rituals are protected by the same free speech provisions.