US bigots Westboro Baptist Church to picket Kirk

Members of a notorious right-wing Christian congregation from the US plan to travel to Edinburgh to picket the crisis-hit Church of Scotland.

The homophobic Westboro Baptist Church will picket the church - at the centre of a threatened schism over the ordination of gay ministers - at its autumn conference in George Street on October 28.

Members of the Phelps family, which founded the Kansas-based church, have previously been refused entry to Britain for "inciting racial hatred against a number of communities".

A Church of Scotland spokesman said it did not want to be associated with the "extreme views" voiced by the church.