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A popular speaker on the right-wing circuit, "Heston is no middle-of-the-roader," says Thomas Catina, executive director of the American Conservative Union. "I chuckle through his speeches, thinking, 'This guy's got guts.'" Heston's rhetoric on homosexuality, feminism, multiculturalism and the skin color of the Founding Fathers has made it onto the website of white supremacist David Duke. (Headline: CHARLTON HESTON SPEAKS UP FOR THE WHITE MAJORITY!) But does it help the average duck hunter to preserve the sporting life? Or even the Second Amendment fundamentalist who believes, as Heston does, that any infringement of the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" is a slide down the slope of totalitarianism? N.R.A. opponents suggest it is convenient for the group to try to drown out the clamor against handguns by changing the subject. But to Heston, who quips that "in Hollywood there are more gun owners in the closet than homosexuals," the cultural war is all of a piece with the war against guns. "We seem to be unloosening and unraveling as a nation," he says.
If Heston can preach traditional values from his Beverly Hills perch, it is because he is seen as one of the rare Tinseltown practitioners. Raised in rural Michigan, he has fond memories of roaming the woods with his .22-cal. rifle (and unhappy ones of his parents' broken marriage). He studied drama at Northwestern University, where he met his wife, Lydia Clarke, an actress and photographer. They have been married for 54 years and remain close to their two grown children. As for his six-year-old grandson Jack, who lives close by, Heston's macho stance melts, and he turns positively gaga. "To me, he's king of the world," says the actor, surveying a once elegant patio, now taken up by a sandbox, a miniature basketball court and well-worn tricycles. The actor published a book last year, To Be a Man: Letters to My Grandson. But even in that sentimental volume, Heston can't resist a few pot shots: "Somewhere in the busy pipeline of public funding is sure to be a demand from a disabled lesbian on welfare that the Metropolitan Opera stage her rap version of Carmen as translated into Ebonics." Got that, Jack?
Like Ronald Reagan, Heston was once a moderate Democrat. He campaigned for Adlai Stevenson and voted for John F. Kennedy. In 1961, when an old friend, Dr. Louis J. West, became active in civil rights, Heston agreed to stop by Oklahoma City and picket several whites-only restaurants for a brief photo opportunity. In his 1995 autobiography, In the Arena, he explains, "It was also part of my expanded persona, riding the tiger." Two years later, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, Heston was among a score of actors who attended Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington. "Our job was to get as much ink and TV time as possible," he recalls. Now, 35 years later, although his civil rights activism consists of only two appearances, he tells audiences, "I was one of the first white soldiers in the civil rights movement"--as he launches into attacks on affirmative action. When asked what made him get involved in the N.R.A., he told TIME, "The same thing that made me undertake picketing for civil rights." And has he acted on behalf of minorities in the past three decades? He pauses. "Once the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, I had other agendas."