The defacement came just days after Anonymous issued a statement saying that it had no plans to attack the Church's Web site. The statement had noted that an earlier letter said to be from the group that threatened online attacks on the church site was a hoax.

Members of the WBC church are known for their strident anti-gay views and for protests at funerals of slain military personnel and others. Last week it issued a letter challenging Anonymous to "bring it."

The Anonymous member on the radio show today said it felt compelled to attack because of what it claimed was the church's belligerent response to the hoax letter. "We had enough. We responded maturely. We said no, we don't want war," the Anonymous member said during the discussion on the talk show.

Prior to today's attacks, WBC's sites were . That outage appears to have been caused by a distributed denial of service attack launched by .

A note posted by Anonymous on the newly defaced WBC site this morning said that the church's "recent antics to gain media attention," had caused the group to lose patience with the church. "Despite having the capability to hack your sites previously, we chose not to," the note said.