LOS ANGELES, May 30 (UPI) -- A Topeka, Kan., church known for picketing military funerals says it will protest outside a Los Angeles memorial service for rocker Ronnie James Dio.
Westboro Baptist Church said on its Web site that it will have picketers at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Sunday and accuses the late frontman for the bands Black Sabbath, Dio, Rainbow and Heaven and Hell of being a Satan worshipper.
Dio, 67, died of stomach cancer May 16.
His wife, Wendy Dio, told CNN she intended to go ahead with the memorial as planned.
"Ronnie hates prejudice and violence," she said. "We need to turn the other cheek on these people that only know how to hate someone they didn't know."
Dio is credited with making the devil's horn popular at heavy metal rock concerts -- a hand sign in which the two middle fingers are down and the pointer and pinky fingers point up. He said his Italian grandmother told him it would ward off the "evil eye," CNN noted.
Westboro Baptist Church became nationally known for sending members to picket against homosexuality at the funerals of U.S. soldiers.
