Your latest Transgender Education News; Transgender homecoming Queen, too University Locker Room discrimination.

Transgender teen voted homecoming queen in Huntington Beach

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (KABC) -- A transgender teen has been elected homecoming queen at a high school in Huntington Beach.

Friday was homecoming for the Marina High School Vikings. It was a big game for the football team, but the players weren't the only ones hoping to end the night victorious.

Cassidy Lynn Campbell was one of five students in the running for homecoming queen. She's the school's first transgender teen nominated to the court. Up until this year, she lived life as Lance Campbell.

A YouTube video of Campbell shows the transformation she makes daily in order to look how she feels inside. Fellow students have been supportive and many of them voted for Campbell to be this year's homecoming queen.

"I think it's really cool how we allowed her to run, and I just think it's a really good thing," said student Kelsey Callanan.

Campbell received the most votes to earn the crown -- a crown she didn't think was within reach, but now wears with her head held high.

"I wasn't doing this for me. I was doing this for so many others, so many others around the nation," said Campbell.

Another transgender student claims discrimination over bathroom, 

locker room use

It’s back-to-school time across America and you know what that means: a fresh supply of stories about transgender students demanding special treatment—particularly when it comes to bathrooms and locker rooms.

The latest spat involves an expelled transgender student at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown who has filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the school violated her civil rights by preventing her from using men’s locker rooms and restrooms, reports the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The student, Seamus Johnston, was born female but identifies as a male. Johnston has undergone several months of hormone treatment recently.

The lawsuit was filed Monday. The suit claims that the school violated federal anti-discrimination laws. Johnston is representing herself.

A Pitt spokesman told the Tribune-Review that the school plans to defend the legal challenge “vigorously.”

The events leading up to the lawsuit are nothing if not interesting.

Johnston was expelled from Pitt-Johnstown for repeatedly using the men’s locker room despite the school’s order that she not do so, explains the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Johnston, 22, and her partner, Katherine Anne McCloskey, 56, filmed an attempted (and failed) series of citizen’s arrests at the Pitt-Johnstown campus. McCloskey did the arresting. Johnston filmed the events. (The antics can be seen at the end of a collection of clips from WPXI on YouTube.)

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/17/another-transgender-student-claims-discrimination-over-bathroom-locker-room-use/#ixzz2fVijqnzI

FDA rejects petition to ban BPA in food packaging, due in part that humans seem to rid their bodies of toxicins quicker the lab rats.

Timeline: BPA from Invention to Phase-Out

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a plastics chemical invented nearly 120 years ago and currently used in enormous amounts to manufacture hard plastic water bottles and to make epoxy linings of metal food cans, like those for canned infant formula. Although its long-time use in consumer products has come with assurances of its safety from industry, studies conducted over the past 20 years now show it to be not only a ubiquitous pollutant in the human body – it contaminates nearly 93% of the population – but also a potent developmental toxin at very low doses.

The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it was denying a petition to ban BPA from all food and drink containers, saying the science does not show an immediate cause for such action.

However, the federal agency cautioned that this ruling does not declare bisphenol A, or BPA, as safe. The agency says it is continuing its assessment of the chemical, which is used in the lining of most canned food and drinks.

• Exposure to BPA of human infants is from 84% to 92% less than previously estimated.
• The level of BPA from food that could be passed from pregnant rodents to their unborn offspring is so low that it could not be measured. Researchers fed pregnant rodents 100 to 1,000 times more BPA than people are exposed to through food, and could not detect the active form of BPA in the fetus eight hours after the mother’s exposure.
• People of all ages process and rid their bodies of BPA faster than the rodents used as test animals do.

Friday’s action comes as a response to a petition filed in 2008 by the Natural Resources Defense Council claiming that the chemical poses a serious threat to human health.

Chemical industry lobbyists praised the government decision.

“FDA’s decision today, which has taken into consideration the best available science, again confirms that BPA is safe for use in food-contact materials, as it has been approved and used safely for four decades,” said Steve Hentges, senior scientist with the American Chemistry Council.

While the chemistry council is characterizing Friday’s move as the government “closing the books” on the petition, it does not mean that the FDA has decided once and for all that BPA is safe.

BPA, a synthetic estrogen developed more than 70 years ago, came into wide use in the 1960s and 1970s to make polycarbonate plastic for such things as baby bottles. It is also used as an epoxy resin to line metal cans. BPA can be found in cellphones, dental sealants, eyeglasses, as a coating for cash register receipts and hundreds of other household items.more

Why Synthetic Estrogens Wreak

Havoc On Reproductive System

ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2008) — Researchers at Yale School of Medicine now have a clearer understanding of why synthetic estrogens such as those found in many widely-used plastics have a detrimental effect on a developing fetus, cause fertility problems, as well as vaginal and breast cancers.

Why Am I Fat? Four Surprising Reasons

1. Stress

While research hasn’t yet determined all the factors in the stress-weight gain feedback loop, there appears to be evidence that stress leads to weight gain — just as putting on a few pounds can lead to stress.

2. Lack of Sleep

Cutting-edge sleep researchers are learning that our round-the-clock schedules may impact our health in surprising ways. While scientists don’t yet know why, studies continue to show that those who don’t get enough deep restful sleep tend to gain weight.

3. Baby Formula

What could be wrong with baby formula? The point here has more to do with the benefits of breast-feeding during the first months of life than the demerits of any particular brand of baby formula.

4. Obesogens

Never heard of “obesogens”? That’s because it’s a scientific term for chemicals that mess with the hormones that regulate our metabolism, and cause us to gain weight. In recent years, scientists have studied all sorts of substances — they call them “endocrine-disrupting chemicals” — that our bodies mistake for hormones.

Bisphenol A
This common chemical, which is used in a variety of plastics and in the lining of food and drink cans, can leach into foods (or directly into the bodies of babies chewing on teethers or toys) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found it in about 9 of 10 Americans tested.

Taxpayer-funded hormone therapy for transgender inmates

MADISON, Wis. - A federal judge has struck down a unique Wisconsin law that prohibits transgender inmates from receiving taxpayer-funded hormone therapy, which alters their appearance to be more like that of the opposite sex.
A group of male inmates who identify as female had challenged the 2006 law with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin and Lambda Legal, a national gay rights group. They say they need the hormones to treat their gender identity disorder, and not having them would lead to severe health problems.
"It's a victory for these inmates who have a condition that is misunderstood and vilified for political purposes that can be very serious," Larry Dupuis, an ACLU lawyer who represented the plaintiffs, said Thursday. "To take away a whole class of treatment just because it's politically disfavored is not constitutional."
While similar prison policies in other states have been challenged successfully, the ACLU and Lambda Legal said the law was the only one of its kind in the nation that denied such medical care to transgender inmates.
Lawmakers who wrote the measure, declared unconstitutional and unenforceable Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Charles Clevert, reacted with outrage and urged Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to appeal. They warned the decision would open the door for taxpayer-funded sex changes for inmates,