But Scott was different. After he recognized her last name and friend-requested her on Facebook, the two began messaging, and Katherine immediately started noticing similarities. "Same interests, similar thought processes," she recalls. "We liked a lot of the same things: favorite color, stuff we liked to eat—just, you know, general things."After three days of correspondence—and after they'd exchanged birth certificates, thus proving their blood relation to one another—they decided to exchange photos as well. According to Katherine, Scott bore a striking resemblance to her, which intrigued her even more. "When we swapped pictures, it was like a ton of bricks hit me. It was like looking at myself in a male version," she says. "I was attracted to him immediately, but I didn't know if he was attracted to me or not."Read more: 'She Didn't Say Vagina': Sex Ed in Fundamentalist Christian Homeschool
Within two weeks, the conversation turned to more intimate topics, and Katherine and Scott discovered a mutual interest in BDSM. Katherine sent Scott a link to her profile on a fetish site, making sure to upload some alluring photos of herself—"I wouldn't say X-rated, but, you know, sexy," she says—beforehand. After that exchange, Scott admitted that he'd been "having thoughts," and the two finally confessed their feelings to one another.Though she was elated that Scott felt the same way, Katherine felt apprehensive, for obvious reasons. "We started questioning, are we normal? Is this something that happens to a lot of people who are adopted, or is this just something wrong with us?" Katherine recalls. "You wonder, because it's such a unique situation to begin with."After a cursory Google search, Katherine learned there was a name for what she and Scott were going through: genetic sexual attraction.The term "genetic sexual attraction" (GSA) was popularized in the late 1980s by Barbara Gonyo, an American woman who claimed she had fallen in love with her biological son, Mitch, after reuniting with him 26 years after she first put him up for adoption.In her memoir, I'm His Mother, But He's Not My Son, Gonyo writes that she was 42 and married, with three other children and a six-month-old grandchild, when she first met Mitch. Though Mitch didn't reciprocate her feelings, Gonyo was deeply affected by her feelings of attraction towards him. She went on to become the public face of GSA, publishing numerous other books on her experience and becoming deeply involved with a support group called "Truth Seekers in Adoption."It was like looking at myself in a male version. I was attracted to him immediately.
In much of America, sleeping with one's sibling is punishable by prison time. However, a growing community of people like Katherine and Scott—many of whom were adopted at a young age and reunited later in life—say that so-called "consensual incest" is a victimless crime and should be treated as such. On mostly anonymous forums and blogs, some of those who have experienced GSA advocate for the abolishment of anti-incest laws, arguing that sexual relationships between relatives are essentially no different than any other type of sexual relationship, as long as they take place between consenting adults.Katherine runs a site called Lilys Gardener [sic]; the name refers to Lily Beckett, the protagonist of Love's Forbidden Flower, a romance novel about a brother and sister engaged in an incestuous love affair. "The right to be with whomever you choose as long as all are consenting adults should be a basic human right," the homepage reads.In some instances, being related actually makes you a bit closer.
Like Petersen, many in the GSA community vehemently differentiate between rape or child abuse and what they describe as sexual relationships between two consenting adults who are blood-related."People link incest to other sorts of things, such as abuse and pedophilia," says Katherine, "but we already have laws for that. A child can't consent to sex, so there's already a law for pedophilia. It shouldn't matter whether [the people in the relationship are] related or not. The fact is, if they're not of age, it's wrong to begin with. Children cannot consent, but adults can.If I can consent to have sex with an entire football team, why can't I consent to have sex with my brother who is over the age of 30?
Julie and Mark, who are brother and sister, are traveling together in France. They are both on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy it, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. So what do you think about this? Was it wrong for them to have sex?
John, another frequent poster on the forums, first became involved with the online GSA community after discovering that his son and daughter, who are half-siblings, had become sexually involved as young adults. Though he has never experienced it himself, he agrees that it's unwise to act on feelings of genetic sexual attraction. "On this forum, we all pretty much advise against it," he says. "In the six years that I have been involved with the forums, I have read postings from hundreds of people… I do not know of any GSA relationship that made it."Katherine's experience seems markedly different. Though she doesn't post on any public forums, she has an online support network of her own, which she originally formed by private messaging others on adoption forums. Whenever she posts on the Lilys Gardener website, she includes a form giving visitors the option to send her a confidential email. She says that she's been in contact with "between 80 and 100" couples in GSA relationships as a result, many of whom she counsels and offers legal advice."There are actually a lot more people out there than you realize," she says.For everyone I spoke with, involvement with some kind of online community is invaluable. After all, wanting to have sex with one's newly discovered sibling is an extremely difficult subject to broach with friends, family, or even a therapist. "GSA people, like all people, seek out communities," says Dr. Wasserman, noting that the "social isolation of bearing a big secret is harmful."Before finding others like her online, April says, she was in a state of despair. Joining the GSA Forums has been life-changing for her: "The impact is obvious because it's been six years since my GSA, and I'm still here trying to help people not have to go through what I did," she says. "Some of the people here have become like family."I remember our arm hairs raising as we sat close together, like they were reaching for each other.
Like April and the other administrators at the GSA Forums, Katherine spends a great deal of time counseling and advising others, though her advice is different. "For me, the most satisfying thing is being able to reassure people, You're not alone, you're not abnormal, you're not a freak, you're not wrong for feeling the feelings that you feel," she says. "Everybody's entitled to have feelings."Her dream, as she describes it to me, is to move to one of the three US states in which incest is not explicitly criminalized, which she refers to as the "safe states": New Jersey, Ohio, or Rhode Island.What will happen once you and Scott relocate there? I ask. Will you be open about the fact that you're related, or will you still try to conceal it from people?Katherine is firm in her reply. "If we move to a safe state, we're throwing a big party, and we're letting everybody know what we have between us and how good we are together and how much we love each other," she says.Ideally, she says she'd love to marry Scott, but she understands that that's not currently feasible. "Once we can be open, I would like to do something to change the laws so that we can get married one day," she says. "You know, laws change every year… Just because it's the law doesn't mean it's wrong."* All names have been changedRead more: When a Woman Is Raped in Rural Alaska, Does Anyone Care?