Melanie Eversley

USA TODAY

A representative for the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church told USA TODAY that its members plan to picket Saturday outside the funeral for two of the victims of last Sunday's shooting massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

"It's not about that person, it's about that whole societal phenomenon," Westboro spokesman Steve Drain of Topeka, Kan., said Thursday night in a telephone interview. "It’s never been OK to be gay and it’s never going to be OK to be gay, no matter how much the spirit of the times calls for the popularity of that sin."

The Kansas-based church, through a lawyer, sent a letter to the Orlando Police Department spelling out plans to protest outside the Cathedral Church of St. Luke on Saturday from 10:15 a.m. to 11 a.m. Westboro members are known for protesting outside the funerals of gays and lesbians. Members declare that the Bible stipulates that the LGBT lifestyle is a sin.

In the letter dated June 16, lawyer Rebekah Phelps-Davis wrote that Westboro members are "law-abiding and nonviolent" and requested that police "fulfill their duty to take responsible steps to keep the peace." They also requested information on permits that are required.

About six members will take part in Saturday's protest, Drain said.

A representative for the GLBT Community Center of Central Florida told the Orlando Sentinel that Westboro members can expect some pushback.

The organization has obtained a protest permit to cushion the families of the two victims to be memorialized Saturday, Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the center, told the news organization. "We'll make sure they are not heard," he told the Sentinel.

Staffers at the cathedral could not be reached Thursday night, but the church has been straightforward about its support of the gay and lesbian community.

The Episcopal congregation published on its Facebook page that it would host a "Service of Compassion for the LGBT and Latino Community" on Sunday at 6 p.m., one week after police say Omar Mateen walked into the Pulse nightclub, a gay establishment, and orchestrated a shooting that left 49 people dead. Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, was shot dead in the massacre, one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

The cathedral also made news last year after hosting the baptism of the child of a gay couple.

The church has not yet begun the process of submitting the required permits for such a protest, Cassandra Anne Lafser, press secretary to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, said in an email Thursday night.

Said Drain, "That thing that happened in Orlando, it was a very tragic thing and it’s a very sorrowful thing, but one of the aspects of the sorrow that people are missing in their kind of worldly, maudlin sentimentality is that all of those people in that whole business … were doing that which God almighty calls a sin."