Early last Tuesday morning, a link came across my Facebook news feed stating that the FDA has lifted its ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood. My first reaction was joy that the rules banning many healthy and otherwise eligible blood donors from saving lives had finally ended. However, after learning more information, I found that the restrictions actually still apply if a gay male has had sexual intercourse with another man within the past year. It was so disappointing to realize that this “change” in rules really is, for the most part, meaningless to the majority that lifting the ban would have affected.

After seeing this, I decided that I would go to the comment sections of some of the news stories reporting the change in rules, because we all know that comment threads on the Internet show the best in people. Unsurprisingly, I found a large amount of hate and ignorance about the idea of gay men giving blood.

Here are some of the well-thought-out comments I saw:

There was this concerned person, who thought they might “catch” the gay if they received blood donations from a gay man.

Sorry to break it to you, but that’s not how being gay works (maybe you legitimately didn't know, and now you do). And if it did, well, there is no ban against gay and bisexual women, so you’d have to worry about “turning gay” because of that.

There were these people who felt that recipients should have the choice of getting straight or gay blood.

Not that this would really change anything, because screened blood, no matter who it's from, is healthy blood, so by denying gay blood, they’d just be reducing the amount of healthy blood they could receive.

This person who blamed Obama and his “corrupt” government.

Because why not?

One who seems to have had an issue with compulsively lying (straight/gay? I'm not really sure...) men.

Sure, we all lie, always, no matter what. I know that I lie to all of my female partners (because I have lots of them, because I am gay).

Lots of people who just seemed to think that this rule change will lead to a major AIDS and HIV outbreak.

Once again, I’m just going to mention that straight people get AIDS and HIV, too. There is a process to screen donated blood, and that process should be trusted. There are plenty of gay men who safely partake in sexual activity and are at a very low risk of HIV and AIDS infection.

And then there were these two people who would rather die than get blood from a gay person.

So, you would rather die than receive blood from a perfectly healthy individual who just happens to have a sexual orientation that’s different than your own? Well, I guess that’s your choice.

These were only some of the many ignorant comments left in the feeds of these news articles. It is so sad that some people in 2015 still believe that they will catch gayness from a gay person’s blood, or that we are all infected with HIV and AIDS. You see, the thing is, these claims are all extremely inaccurate scientifically, and you would be much better off taking the “risk” that comes along with getting a blood transfusion.

There are plenty of donors who know that their blood is healthy, and if for some reason it wasn’t, they know that it will go through tests to confirm that healthiness. Although there are many others who discriminate against them because of misinformation, these people still try to help and save as many lives as possible. It is a truly beautiful thing that these people want to help the very people who preach hate at them, even though they may not deserve or want the blood of a gay man.

*All photos in this article are from Facebook comment feeds, and the posters have been made anonymous for their own privacy.