WATCH: Activist Says Family Dinner Might Soften Antigay Leader's Attitude

Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council

Jennifer Chrisler, head of the Family Equality Council, told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin today that antigay leader Tony Perkins might “open his heart” if he accepts her invitation to dinner with her family.

Chrisler extended the invitation after Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, discussed his opposition to same-sex marriage and denounced gay parents in an interview with Baldwin last week, and Baldwin challenged him to justify his views, asking him among other things if he had ever been to the home of a same-sex married couple.

Baldwin noted that Perkins, queried by CNN, told the network today that he and his wife “will be glad to respond when we receive the invitation to find a time that works.” Chrisler isn’t holding her breath, but she thinks spending time with her family, which includes her same-sex spouse and 10-year-old twin boys, would do Perkins some good. “I don’t think that I’ll change his mind, buy I do think that we might be able to open his heart a little bit,” she told Baldwin.

Watch the interview here.