Bethesda has confirmed that patrons of Quakecon can donate some blood and receive some free swag from The Evil Within. Dubbed the “Good Within Blood Drive,” Bethesda is hoping that fans of the game can donate a good amount of blood to a good cause – saving other peoples’ lives.

Here’s where things are getting really, really weird. Despite the completely good-natured message behind this blood drive, some people have come out and cried out, saying that only giving away swag for donating blood is clearly homophobic and hateful towards gay men, because reasons.

You see, to donate blood you have to meet a bunch of criteria, because the Red Cross and the FDA obviously don’t want people with HIV or Hepatitus donating blood, only to infect recipients of a blood transfusion. The line is drawn in their very thorough list of criteria for eligible donors, in this case where the HIV clause specifically says:

“[You] are a male who has had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977”

Look, I realize this is a very touchy subject and lots of people can be offended by the things I’m saying here, but Bethesda is in no way attacking gay men or deliberately trying to stop them from enjoying The Evil Within, or some free swag for it.

The issue here lies with the Red Cross and the FDA, who probably haven’t updated their policies for HIV and homosexual contact in years. If anything, you should be chalking it up to them and demand that a fair assessment be made, that is if you’re a gay man, or have had sex with another man.

There are definitely a lot of gay men who have been careful with sexual partners, and are therefore not infected with HIV, so it brings this clause under question – and pretty much out of my knowledge base. Would they make exceptions for gay men who have documentation proving they’re clean? I’d like to hope so, otherwise that’s ridiculous.

While Quakecon is going from July 17th to the 20th, you can only donate blood from July 18th through the July 19th.