Groups fear parents are being kept in the dark
They started in colleges, but trans closets—rooms stocked with transgender clothes and accessories for students to change into after arriving to school and back out of before going home—are being discovered in public schools with some indication they are being kept a secret from parents.
In a recent TikTok video, a California teacher implies that the trans closet he started at the high school where he works is meant to be kept from parents.
“The goal of the transition closet is for our students to wear the clothes that their parents approve of, come to school and then swap out into the clothes that fit who they truly are,” the teacher said.
The California Family Council and others eventually confirmed the identity of the teacher as Oakland Unified School District Spanish teacher Thomas Martin-Edwards, who is also the founder of “Queer Teacher Fellowship.”
Martin-Edwards, the teacher who runs the trans closet, is also transgender. He has posted videos of himself in the classroom showing off the stilettos he wears to school.
Neither Martin-Edwards, a former assistant principal in another school district, nor the school responded to inquiries by The Epoch Times about the trans closet.
“This is [an] example of the deceit schools are deliberately using to carry out a growing transgender movement in public schools behind the backs of parents,” the Christian conservative group California Family Council wrote on its website.
“In addition to gender ideology madness, this school is teaching children that it is acceptable to defy their parents.”
California Family Council first discovered the trans closet through a Facebook posting by a nonprofit group that calls itself “The Transition Closet.”
On its Facebook page, The Transition Closet states it is working with one of the district’s high schools to create a trans closet—posting “we are extremely excited to begin our journey in working with Fremont High School of Oakland, California, along with our favorite teacher of TikTok/@justaqueerteacher.”
