Controversial new book claims that smoking and drinking by a pregnant woman increases the chance her child will be gay. I imagine this is from the well known study entitled "Look What I Pulled Out of My Ass."

Courtesy of the Daily Mail:  

Women who suffer stress during pregnancy increase the chance of their child being gay, according to a controversial new book. 

The lifestyle of pregnant mothers affects the sexuality of their unborn child, altering their hormones and the formation of their brains, it claims. 

Smoking or taking drugs can also result in a child who grows up to be gay, according to the book by Dutch neuroscientist Dick Swaab, which is yet another chapter in the debate about the origins and causes of homosexuality. 

Professor Swaab believes that a child’s sexuality is determined in the womb and cannot be altered, while others argue that it is affected by upbringing or ‘selected’ as a lifestyle choice. 

In his book, We Are Our Brains, he writes: ‘Although it’s frequently assumed that development after birth also importantly affects our sexual orientation, there’s no proof of this whatsoever. 

‘Children brought up by lesbians aren’t more likely to be homosexual. Nor is there any evidence at all for the misconception that homosexuality is a “lifestyle choice”.’ 

Professor Swaab says that the development of the brain during pregnancy is altered by the tiniest of chemical changes. 

As an example, he claims that a drug prescribed to two million mothers to combat miscarriages during the 1940s and 1950s increased the likelihood of bisexuality and homosexuality in their unborn children. 

‘Pre-birth exposure to nicotine or amphetamines also increases the likelihood of lesbian daughters,’ he writes in the book. 

‘Pregnant woman suffering from stress are also more likely to give birth to homosexual children, because their raised levels of the stress hormone cortisol affect the production of fetal sex hormones.’ 

Professor Swaab also claims that a boy with a number of older brothers is more inclined to be gay, and that nature made teenagers annoying to curb incest, and that difficult births produce children with schizophrenia, autism, and anorexia.

You know, because all of that makes so much sense.

Perhaps somebody should point out to the professor that homosexuality has been a component of human sexuality since the beginning of time, and well before the discovery of tobacco and even alcoholic beverages.

Not only that but homosexuality is wide spread among mammals, birds, and fish. When was the last time you saw a pregnant dolphin getting hammered during happy hour?

Look while I applaud any effort to keep pregnant women from smoking and drinking, because it really IS bad for their babies, this is simply ridiculous and should not be used to frighten expectant mothers into thinking they are responsible for the sexuality of their fetus, simply becasue they had a glass of wine before they decided to pee on stick.

And by the way, for the record, my ex-wife did not drink nor smoke, and had the most carefree pregnancy imaginable. So I feel pretty comfortable calling bullshit on this book.