By Alice Giordano
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.”
Amare Roush, founder of The Transition Closet, told The Epoch Times that her organization does support keeping the existence of trans closets at schools secret from parents, because of the abuse she says children often face at home if they disclose to their parents they are transgender.
“We do provide a safe space for kids whose parents are not accepting, because it’s known to help lower the suicide rate,” said Roush who is also a certified advocate for domestic violence victims.
“These kids are going to do it anyway, we just want a way to provide them with a way to do it safely to where they’re not wearing clothes that are too small for them, or doing so in a way that’s going to get them hurt by their parents.”
Roush emphasized that school was the best venue to provide trans kids with trans clothing.
“Kids are at schools 40 hours a week, that’s where they spend most of the time, that’s where they form most of their relationships,” she said, “clothing is a big part of how we express ourselves and those kids that are able to express themselves correctly, are able to feel supported correctly.”
Another trans closet being operated out of the Denver Conservatory Green Middle School in Colorado was also recently posted about on social media.
The Twitter post ignited a flurry of messages slamming the school for encouraging transgenderism among students as young as 12 years old.
“This is grooming,” tweeted one Colorado man, “Police should come to the classroom and arrest whoever the teacher is in this classroom.”
The school also did not respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times.
The original post about the Denver trans closet was made by “Buy Nothing Central Park” and refers to the closet for transgender students as being started at “our school.” It also asks for clothing for the trans closet being dropped off at the school.
Megan Fox, a freelance columnist for PJ Media and co-host of the weekly YouTube show “Exposing Family Court Corruption,” recently raised $1,650 through gofundme.com to pay for documents relating to the trans closet at a Colorado school.
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Fox recently wrote in her column that the school told her she had to pay $1,650 to obtain the documents, which she requested via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). According to Fox, the school said the bill was based on 55 hours of staff time at $30 an hour to fulfill her request.
On its website, The Transition Closet states that “the near future holds transition closet[s] and services throughout the school district for students of the Trans/Nonbinary/Intersex and additional LGBTQIA+ community members.”
Roush said her organization is working with other schools in the United States to start trans closets and her organization currently runs them at several churches including Lutheran, Episcopalian, and Methodist churches.
For the California school trans closet, the Arkansas-based group also includes contact information linked to the website validbybrodie.com, which includes a “start your own closet” section for students, teachers, and school administrators.
It has also adopted the slogan “when your [sic] ready to come out of the closet, step into ours” and has an online shop that includes a variety of transgender accessories.
It also sells transgender workbooks for teens and runs online name change clinics.
Transgenderism is a societal sickness that should be outlawed countrywide. It is child abuse to force children to alter their biological gender
Doing things and keeping it secret from parents is always a bad idea, but this problem would go away if parents would decide to stop forcing their kids’ clothing choices into two cubby holes.
It would go away if the pop culture mediates would stop promoting it at every opportunity of interaction
No, it wouldn’t. It would just be hidden from view.
There have always been people who violated societal norms when it comes to gender expectations. Here’s an example.
We’re seeing more of it now in large part because there’s less social stigma surrounding the idea of violating gender norms. If we restigmatized it, it would go back underground and you wouldn’t be forced to look at it, but people would still have the same impulses and desires.
Yes, and the question is should we control those desires, or let them fly free without any consequences or “social” expectations?
If no, then you CANNOT have an issue with pedophilia or people who publicly want to be pissed on, etc. Why are they being singled out? They can’t help it! It’s just your bigoted stigma, man.
The “stigma” as you call it is for a reason. Please note the cultural-extinction level of non-birthrates among all those enlightened LGBT-friendly Western nation.
Most of the so called trans people are merely responding to a fad that gives them immediate power and status. It’s not a common thing and should not be encouraged or manufactured.
LBGT is not science, and it’s not a class of people. It’s pathology mixed with selfishness, exploited by ideology to attack religion and our tradition of democratic processes.
You’re living in an old, late 20th Century understanding of LGBT. It’s not new, it’s not enlightened, and it’s preying on certain kinds of people who think they are “standing up” for the weak while they are just finding cause to fuel their own hate.
A guy who’s dressing in women’s clothing involves nobody else. A child molester is injuring another person who is unable to consent to what is happening. The situations are not parallel.
Except when he’s anally raping a fellow female student in the bathroom, which has happened.
Quite parallel.
The norm was, sure, dress like a woman if you were a man. That’s fine, but I was free to think whatever I wanted about it. Allowed to agree or disagree…you couldn’t make me accept it if I didn’t’ want to.
You had the same rights under the law.
You’re intentionally misrepresenting the topic by reducing it to cross dressing.
Some trans women tried to sue after an intimate encounter because the guy was mad they had a penis, thought they were a real woman.
This goes deeper than crossdressing, and invites the normalization of any sexual aberration, such as pedophilia.
Gay rights were achieved. The parasites making money off of it had to manufacture a new “minority” to keep the outrage money machine going.
Now it’s hurting kids, however.
Tell that to my kid’s classmate who was crossdressing and then tried to kill themselves a few months ago.
It wasn’t because they were bullied. It’s because they are confused and being misled. They know it.
I’m pretty clear on which “aberrations” can be normalized without injuring others. I’m guessing you are, too.
There are things we need to be concerned about, like pedophilia. There are other things that we don’t need concern ourselves with, a list which appears to include many things that get you and others on this site very, very upset.
I’m trying to shine a light on the fact that there are some activities that don’t really affect you or, really, anybody except the person engaging in them. Perhaps you could cross those off the long list of things that get you so upset.
No, more often than not, they intersect. That is the problem, and that the left wants to normalize the behavior.
Yeah, it would. It’s a fad, not an epidemic.
Funny how it’s going away in Ukriane, now that men need to be men and women need to be women.
LGBT is a luxury behavior for the bloated, gluttonous West.
It’s also a historically-proven precursor to societal collapse.
All societies collapse, eventually. Therefore, every possible human activity comes before societal collapse.
All societies that have collapsed have had gay people, but it doesn’t mean that the gayness caused the collapse. Correlation is not equal to causation.
That’s a logical fallacy. You know better.
Another logical fallacy. You’re being cowardly here, and you know it. You’re also lying: I did not say “gayness” it caused it.
Sexual deviancy on a mass scale is a precursor to society collapse. You’ve offered nothing intelligent to argue against this reality.
I think you might be greg using another account. He talks in circles like this, intentionally mis-quoting his opponent…then arguing against things never said.
Or you’re just a typical Leftist, who wants what they want, damn the morality, and damn the consequences?
So do you. I was highlighting the way that your comment did the same thing.
Nonsense.
Let’s try this again:
I demand you give me a reason this is not so.
Go fuck yourself, friend. Approach me differently, and we can communicate.
Given I still have you dancing on a string, I think not.
Let’s try this again, for a third time:
I DEMAND YOU GIVE ME A REASON THIS IS NOT SO. YOU HEM AND HAW, HIDE BEHIND THE BIBLE, SPUTTER AND ASK QUESTIONS WHEN YOU CAN’T ANSWER ANY OF MINE.
I DEMAND YOU GIVE ME A REASON THIS IS NOT SO.
NO? CAN’T DO IT? WHY DON’T YOU SHUT THE F*CK UP AND REALIZE THIS ISN’T THE 1980s AND THE CANNED RESPONSES YOU HAVE WERE DESIGNED TO ARGUE WITH PEOPLE THAT DON’T EXIST. WE’RE NOT FIGHTING AGAINST JIM BAKKER AND JIMMY SWAGGERT ANYMORE, FRIEND. WE’RE FIGHTING AGAINST BILLIONS-PAID AND INSTALLED POLITICIANS AND TEACHERS LIKE YOU GROOMING OUR KIDS TO GET F*CKED IN THE ASS IN THE SCHOOL BATHROOM.
I DEMAND YOU DEFEND YOUR OLD 20TH CENTURY BELIEF THAT UNCONTROLLED AND UNMITIGATED SEXUAL EXPRESSION, USED AS A CHEAP WAY TO GET POWER YOU DIDN’T EARN, ISN’T BOTH A HISTORICAL AND CURRENT KILLER OF CULTURES AND NATIONS.
ANSWER ME, GODDAMNIT! NOW!
Hooray for us! We can afford that luxury!
For now.
It will definitely go away, as in the cultures promoting and acting on this will be wiped from the earth like Sodom and Gomorrah.
And before you get all butthurt, I’m not talking about sin or religion. I’m talking about having a healthy culture that can defend itself and make babies. Two very important and logical needs to fill for any nation to continue to exist.
Then maybe you shouldn’t have made direct reference to Bible stories in your comment.
For a guy that last night said he did not know of such things it didnt take long for you to rush to defend the closet. You should at least try not to be a stereo type.
What “stereo type” [sic] am I embodying?
You need to figure that out for yourself clown boi
The Bible is the oldest and most corroborated book of history in all of humanity.
Do you know how to debate? Do you have any points or counterarguments to anything?
Do you understand biology, science, history, and culture?
Is knowledge and analysis less important to you than a cultural fad that is not what it appears?
Are you saying that the Bible story of Sodom and Gomorrah is a work of history?!
That’s not a rhetorical question.
I’m sorry that you’re trapped in an old paradigm. That doesn’t mean everyone else has to be.
Accepting ancient societal norms without question, as you’re doing, is the opposite of analysis. The opposite.
Explain how it’s not, if you will. Don’t add your atheistic religious commentary and bigotry. Just use rational thought and give proof of why the Bible is not a historical document and how nothing in it ever existed or happened.
Either your stupid or just being an asshole. I clearly stated that sexual immorality is a precursor to societal collapse, historically. You know this, that’s why you honed in on my Sodom and Gomorrah example (one among many…Rome being another, the Holy Roman Empire, the list is long) instead of actually proving me wrong.
Sexual immorality is a precursor to societal collapse, historically.
To say the above shows you are the one stuck in an old paradigm. It’s not enlightened, not insightful, and not new to blindly follow the current LGBT fad.
It’s actually quite backwards, as is your bigoted stereotype of so-called conservatives. I think you’re stuck in 1983.
That is PRECISELY what you are doing, giving the canned bullshit statement societal norms have programmed you to vomit, without giving any analysis to the situation.
I know the the one who makes an assertion is the one who needs to bring the proof. You made the assertion. Feel free to use all you knowledge of “biology, science, history and culture” to prove your assertion.
Once you give an actual argument based on something other than the Bible, I can supply a counterargument.
Prove to me you can apply this by actually doing it sometime. You have no counter arguments beyond canned societal norms and CNN disinformation.
That’s your bigotry showing, as I did no such thing. Not surprised Judeo-Christianity triggers you, though. That explains a lot.
You never have an you never will. Must be an election year.
If your argument is based on the Bible story of Sodom and Gomorrah, that’s exactly what you did. Own it.
I never made my contempt for religion a secret. I’m not surprised you’re Christian. That explains a lot of your nuttiness.
Those incidents seem to always go in the direction of the children before forced into the direction of the gender preferred by the parent(s).
Disney Has Lost $50 Billion In Value Since Woke War With Florida
This should be a lesson to the woke corporation. Remember, the customer is always right and the customer emphatically does not support lbgtqqqqq+ or whatever bullshit it is.
https://twitter.com/MarinaMedvin/status/1518606826073464840