GRAND RAPIDS -- The Westboro Baptist Church -- notorious for twisting scripture to justify persecution of homosexuals and picketing at funerals -- have announced their intent to protest this week's memorial services honoring former first lady Betty Ford in Grand Rapids.

On the Topeka, Kansas-based church's website, the fringe group said they will picket services on Thursday because Ford divorced her first husband William Warren prior marrying the late president Gerald R. Ford.

In Westboro's eyes, that makes Ford an adulterer who "loved to sit with tawdry reporters and blather about sex."

The announcement declares the group's intent to picket in Palm Desert, Calif. on Tuesday and at Grace Episcopal Church in East Grand Rapids on Thursday at 1 p.m., when her casket will travel by motorcade to the Ford Museum.

Whether they actually show up in Grand Rapids this week is anyone's guess, said Tim Boudreau, a Central Michigan University journalism professor who hosted members of the group in his media law class in November.

Often, their announcements are a bluff to grab media attention, he said. Then, "conveniently, they don't make it."

"They're interested in generating publicity for their cause, and they'll use any tactic," he said.

The extremist church -- mostly a collection of Fred Phelps' extended family and friends -- formally won the right to picket funerals in March after an 8-1 Supreme Court decision ruled they are protected by the First Amendment.

The church said they're targeting her funeral because, "She couldn't wait to have an audience with a reporter to titter about premarital sex, and how much she loved to teach it to her daughters. The trashy reporters encouraged her to say more! So she urged all the women of this doomed foul nation to engage in extra-marital sex. Then she pushed for abortion, because when you teach a nation's women to be whores, it's inevitable pregnancies will inconvenience the selfish strumpets! That is the legacy of Betty Ford."

Boudreau got to know the church's stance better last fall in Mount Pleasant, when he invited three of its members, Shirley Phelps-Roper and her two daughters, to his class, which has a tradition of hosting people with extreme positions to illustrate the breadth of First Amendment protections.

During three separate sessions, Phelps-Roper explained her family's reasoning for traveling the country protesting at funerals of celebrities, public figures and soldiers.

"You have to obey God," she said. "If this country had policies of obedience, they wouldn't need a standing army and they wouldn't have dead soldiers."

Grieving friends and parents led fallen soldiers into believing and trusting in a lie and "out into the killing fields and crosshairs of an angry god," she said.

The church, which is not affiliated with any known Baptist association, is considered by many to be a hate group and monitored by anti-defamation groups.

They often spark counter-protests, and a group of motorcycle riders often follow to block people's view of them. They have sparked lawsuits and legislation aimed at making protesting near a funeral illegal.

Boudreau's reaction to finding out about the Ford picket: "That's disgusting. ... Nothing they do surprises me anymore."

He said that while the group is certainly bothersome and offensive, they appear willing to abide by the regulations on when, where and how they can picket.

"They're often kept at quite a distance," he said. "If you want to be offended, you kind of have to seek them out."

E-mail: localnews@grpress.com