The ever-engaging, not always sensible Humanist website has advice for cishet people this week on how to be a Pride ally. Don’t know who’s “cishet”? You are, most likely. I’d never seen the word before, but I’m reading it as a portmanteau of cisgender — not transgender, not “fluid,” etc. — and heterosexual.

How I long for the days when no one thought we needed a word for that.

Of course you know what “Pride” is about. It’s another language trick, this time turning a perfectly ordinary term into a virtual trademark for all things homosexual, transgender, queer and otherwise not cishet. Cishet people simply cannot be Proud™. Not this month.

But they can be allies. If they follow a list of rules, helpfully provided at The Humanist. And if they get their paperwork properly stamped — see Rule Number 9.

Advice for Allies Who Can’t Be Proud™

Lay down your life for the cause! Nothing matters more!

It begins with, “Do your research.” The instructions are very clear: Do not take part in any Pride™ events unless you’re “well acquainted with the history of Pride.” Don’t show up for class unless you’ve done your homework!

Rule Number 2 is, believe it or not, to defend those Proud™ people with your life. The actual wording — I’m not making this up — is, “Put your body on the line.” It’s “the single most important thing allies can do during Pride and beyond.” Lay down your life for the cause! Nothing matters more!

Even if you do, though, don’t ever lose sight of Rule Number 3: “Pride isn’t about you.” It’s clear as can be: Cishet people can’t be Proud™. Not even if they’re allies. Not good enough, apparently.

I mean, really not good enough. Rule Number 9 says it’s wrong even to call oneself an ally. “It’s not up to cishet people to decide we are allies.” Only properly Proud™ people have enough purchase on reality, that they can decide who merits the honor, who falls short, and where the papers are filed to document the decree. And besides, “Calling yourself something doesn’t make it true.”

Yes, that’s a direct quote. I’m sure you see the irony, the words left missing at the end of the sentence: “… unless you’re a man and call yourself a woman, or a woman and call yourself a man.” I mean, can’t a cishet person even identify as an ally? Apparently not. We don’t set the rules, LGBTQ people do. And they’ve set them to exclude the rest of us. How convenient for them.

Even Allies Must Bow Down to the Lords of Culture

Now, obviously I’m not recommending anyone go for the title of ally. I’m in favor of pride in some forms, but I put no pride in gay Pride™. The Church has long known pride (without the ™) as the first of the seven deadly sins. It’s the failure to recognize our place as the creatures, and God as the Creator. This pride comes in many expressions, and it has done so since the third chapter of Genesis. So today’s newly self-proclaimed Pride™ community has no special claim on this first deadly sin. We’re all guilty of it, at different times and in different ways.

But Pride™ makes a proud point of it. It’s our culture’s brashest, most intentionally rebellious outcry, “I will not be ruled by anyone! Not by anything! Not even by the body of my birth! And certainly not by any God, god or goddess but myself.”

But it does not stop there; for it adds every time, “I will rule others!” Even “allies” must bend the knee. It’s more than just a little reminiscent of the jizya. And if allies must bow down, how much more the real dhimmi, the Christians? What obeisance must we render to these lords of culture?

I can remember when there was no word needed for “cishet.” I can remember, too, when the secularists’ demand, “Don’t you dare impose your beliefs on me!” wasn’t so outrageously self-contradictory. Now it’s at least as irrational as, “Calling yourself something doesn’t make it true.”

I can only shake my head in amazement. And laugh. But more than that, I weep. I grieve more than I fume. And I pray God will grant us all mercy.

Tom Gilson (@TomGilsonAuthor) is a senior editor with The Stream, and the author of A Christian Mind: Thoughts on Life and Truth in Jesus Christ and Critical Conversations: A Christian Parent’s Guide to Discussing Homosexuality with Teens, and the lead editor of True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism.