What’s Going On With This Gender-Care Matter?

The Southern Truth

By Gloria Zuurveen, Editor-in-Chief
Founder & CEO, Parent Action Coalition for Education (PACE)

“Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online. And no one should lose access to medically necessary health care because their federal government tried to interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices.”
  — Letitia James, Attorney General of New York

As the founder of the Parent Action Coalition for Education, my mission has always been simple and unwavering: to educate and to elevate—away from false narratives and toward the truth about what is really going on. In keeping with the message Marvin Gaye asked long ago—“What’s going on?”—we continue to ask that question today.

Parents should never lose the right to make decisions for the children they birthed or for the children they have legal guardianship over as protector and defender. That authority is fundamental. It is historical. It is moral. And it does not belong to courts, hospitals, or political ideologies. It belongs in the home.

And yet today, that parental authority—especially in Black communities—is being challenged under the banner of what is now called “gender care.”

So once again, we must ask: What is going on?

What is going on with this so-called gender-care show?

It amazes me to see that what was once a conservative community—Black people, before integration and forced assimilation—would now even entertain a discussion about underage children making irreversible decisions. Children who cannot buy liquor or cigarettes, yet are being allowed to cross a line and alter their sex without parental consent or authority.

This is not how we were raised. And more importantly, this is not what the historical record shows about Black America from 1950 to today.

What the Record Shows

From the 1950s through the early 2000s, there was no tradition—medical, cultural, or communal—of gender-affirming medical care for minors in Black America. None.

Black families believed:

• A child was a child
• Puberty was natural
• Sex was biological
• Parents had authority
• Faith guided identity
• Gender confusion, when it appeared, was addressed through family, church, discipline, love, and time—not hormones, blockers, surgeries, or state intervention.

There were no pediatric gender clinics serving Black communities.
There were no puberty blockers prescribed for identity.
There were no courts overriding Black parents.

The idea that medicalized gender care for minors is somehow rooted in Black civil-rights tradition is simply not true. It is new, and it did not originate in Black households, Black churches, or Black cultural norms.

It came top-down—from elite universities, activist lawyering, medical institutions, and government policy.

And Now They Call This “Progress”?

As a minister of the Word and a believer in what Christ said—“He made them male and female”—that is all I need to stand on. The Word of God is what I believe. This is the Southern Truth I was raised and bred on, and I do not believe that I am wrong.

Those like Attorney General Letitia James may beg to differ. Attorney General Rob Bonta may say the same. But let us be clear: this narrative is being pushed hardest in communities that once resisted it most—Black communities.

Why?

Because history shows that when Black parents lose authority, the state steps in.
When Black families are destabilized, systems expand.
And when Black children are confused, institutions profit.

What is being called “progress” today would have been considered unthinkable, unethical, and dangerous to children in Black America for most of modern history.

This agenda is a detriment. It is not what God meant when He said in His Word that a man shall cleave to his wife—opposite sex, opposite gender, scientific and realistic.

Puberty Is Not the Enemy

Hormones naturally rage during puberty. That is part of healthy growth, curiosity, and becoming who God created a child to be. Those feelings are not the problem—and they never were.

The danger comes when that normal, God-designed season of development is interrupted. When children, still learning who they are, are given blockers to halt a healthy process, confusion replaces clarity. What once felt natural is medicalized. What should have been guided with love and patience is instead treated as something to be stopped.

Now, too many are victims of suicidal thoughts—not because natural puberty failed them, and not because they needed gender care—but because they needed someone to love them unconditionally while they grew into the man or woman God made them to be.

It is not the natural acts of puberty that create this crisis. It is the interference with a healthy, God-ordained process that is contributing to these tragic outcomes.

Why the Black Press Must Tell the Truth

Here is where the Southern Truth must speak plainly.

Much of the Black press today leans liberal in its reporting—not just politically, but culturally. Too often, it repeats narratives about us, without telling the truth of us.

The historical truth is this:

• Black America did not raise children this way
• Black parents did not surrender authority this way
• Black churches did not teach identity this way

So when this narrative is pushed as if it is natural, normal, or historically rooted in Black life, the record says otherwise.

Why would the Bible say:

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:11

That scripture speaks directly to the unbelievable actions being taken by legal leaders today—many shaped by liberal universities or by philosophies disconnected from faith, family, and restraint.

A Southern Truth Wake-Up Call

This is not gender care.
This is not civil rights.
This is not Black tradition.

This is cultural confusion, dressed up as compassion, enforced by courts, and paid for with the bodies and minds of our children.

Benediction

As a Southern, Black, Bible-Belt-raised Mississippian, our foundation was built on the belief that God made them male and female. That is my story. That is my song. And that is the faith I will hang on to.

God does not make mistakes.

But His enemy still goes to and fro, seeking whom he may destroy—and what better targets than a girl or a boy?

That is the Southern Truth.