Brittany Novotny grew up as a man in her home state and later elected for sex reassignment surgery to become a woman. Now’s she’s running for state representative in the interest of ensuring her state’s “better future.” And, according to Novotny, a Democrat, she’s gotten “literally zero hates...Zero hate emails. Zero hate phone calls,” she says. “Nobody at the door has slammed the door at my face and called me weird. In fact, people have embraced me with open arms.” The mud-slinging has commenced in this campaign, of course, but don’t look at that yet—let’s all just sit and feel that warmth of open-minded community for a moment. Ahh.

In even more rewarding news, Spain breath mint brand Smint is raising the bar for customer loyalty by offering buyers sex toy products in return for purchasing its perky peppermints.

Claiming that “freshness was never so hot,” the manufacturer allows purchase points to be redeemed on their site, “Smint Me Hot,” for prizes such as vibrating mobile games, fluffy handcuffs and striptease sets. The promotion culminates with a grand prize drawing for a lovers’ vacation in Bali. If only this kind of marketing genius was employed in the states—“consumer confidence” would sure be on the rise, fast.

Also on the rise is the teen pregnancy rate in the United States, at least between 2005 and 2007. While the rates dropped a little in 2008, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control probed into the unfortunate statistic and discovered that one-third of sexual education programs do not talk about birth control. At all.

The CDC did face-to-face interviews with nearly 2,800 teenagers to discover that, while 97 percent said they received formal sex education, and 92 percent heard about the horrors of sexually transmitted diseases, only two-thirds of the group actually got instruction on how to avoid such complications—and the remaining one-third was left to fend for themselves? Would that be the School of Hard Knocked-Ups?

Elsewhere, Craigslist has confirmed that its adult services advertisements have indeed been taken off the site permanently, and not just blocked by a black “Censored” label—and, although cooperating with state attorney’s non-lawsuit-based demands, the site’s founder continues to defend its rights to carry such advertisement in the first place. Meanwhile, traffic to the optional classified ad site Backpage.com spiked this month. Hmm, we wonder why.