UI junior wants 'don't ask don't tell' rule to end

For University of Iowa junior and Iowa National Guard member Dan Tallon, 'don't ask don't tell' is a personal issue. Tallon, 21, has a gay father, and a gay twin brother who considered military service but ultimately rejected enlisting because of the federal policy that prohibits homosexual and bisexual soldiers from disclosing their sexual orientation.

But the political science major from Davenport also sees it as a states' rights issue, and he thinks Iowa is just the state to challenge the federal policy.

Tallon has started a petition seeking to push Iowa lawmakers to not enforce the federal 'don't ask don't tell' policy in the Iowa National Guard.

He started collecting this spring and has well over 500 signatures on the petition, including those of local government officials and state lawmakers from Eastern Iowa.

He would like to get the Iowa City Council to endorse it.

The federal government is dragging its feet on 'don't ask don't tell,' he said, and Tallon wants to see quicker action at the state level, through the National Guard.

'Iowa would be the perfect state to make a statement,' Tallon said.

'My goal is just somebody bringing it up ... just a little education.' A 2006 graduate of Davenport North High School, Tallon joined the Iowa National Guard in September 2006, mostly as a way to earn money for college. His deployment to Afghanistan this fall, along with about 3,500 other Iowa troops, will be his first.

'Hopefully while we're gone somebody will take it up and make it an issue,' he said.

He plans to write Iowa lawmakers during his stint in Afghanistan, hoping the issue will make the 2011 legislative session.

Tallon's twin brother, Michael Tallon, considered the National Guard and the Coast Guard after high school, but did not join. That was shortly after Michael Tallon came out of the closet.

Michael Tallon, 21, a student at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, said he thought hard about joining the Coast Guard.

'I shied away because I didn't want to deviate from the person my friends and family had so openly embraced,' he said via e-mail. 'I didn't want to go through life hiding who I was from everyone and stressing every second about someone finding out.' His brother's petition is an awesome thing, strengthening gay rights efforts by showing that straight people care about those issues, too, Michael Tallon said.

'To attach a face like mine to it proves that LGBT people want to serve, they want to fight and they want to honor their country,' Michael said.

Dan Tallon said his brother and father were his motivation for the petition.

It's a civil rights issue, but also about employment and education equality, Tallon said, since many Guard members join to pay for college. He has occasionally discussed the politics of the policy with fellow Guard members, but Tallon hasn't talked about his petition with his superiors.

'I don't fear reprisal too much,' he said. 'I think people respect peo­ple's opinion.'