In 1994, reviewing Robb Forman Dew's book "The Family Heart: A Memoir of When Our Son Came Out", Bawer praised the book but added: "To be gay is to yearn for a time when it won't be necessary for mothers to write sensitive books about their children's coming out." Reviewing a book by Urvashi Vaid in 1995, Bawer argued that "while more and more gay people" were seeking a gay-rights movement focused on "integration, education and conciliation", Vaid wished "to return to the day of class struggle and liberation fronts". The fact that "her rhetoric has come to seem so old so fast", he concluded, "is a measure of how gay political discourse outside the academy, anyway—has been profoundly altered in a relatively brief time". Bawer explicitly called for same-sex marriage in a March 1996 "New York Times" op-ed. In June 1997, he expressed concern that so-called "morning-after" treatments for possible HIV infection could result in "increased carelessness" by at-risk individuals. In January 2001, he urged the Bush administration in a "New York Times" op-ed "to take substantive action on behalf of gays", arguing that the U.S. government was "now lagging behind the American people on gay issues".