It’s been a while since undergrad psych, but here goes:
The short answer is that attraction infers a conditioned response and orientation infers an unconditioned response.
Basically this means that an orientation is something that’s hard wired (maybe – I’ll get to this) while an attraction is learned through experience. For example a dog smells food and salivates. That’s an unconditioned (or innate) response. The dog didn’t have to learn to salivate; he was born with that programmed response. Now, I ring a bell every time I feed the dog. What happens? The dog will begin to salivate when he hears the bell even if there’s no food. The dog’s behavior is a conditioned response because the dog has learned that the bell means food. If that dog could talk, he’d probably tell you he likes that bell. This is the famous Pavlov experiment that illustrates some of the basic tenant of behavioralism.
Now apply that to human sexuality. The unconditioned response is the physical changes that occur in a male in response to stimulus from the female. Male sees naked women and gets excited. But if the male learns to associate certain visual cues with the possibility of sex these visual cues can serve the same purpose as the bell in Pavlov’s experiment. Some of these cues are cultural (like long hair or fingernails) and some are personal. Your attraction to brown-eyed women is learned (although you probably don’t remember where or how), and is a conditioned response. Your attraction to women is innate, an unconditioned response.
But sexual attraction is more complex than most behavior. One reason for this is that sexual attraction doesn’t develop until the onset of puberty. Puberty occurs in most children sometime after ten years old. By this time the child has developed a wide array of learned responses. It has been theorized that these learned responses somehow incorporate themselves into a child’s developing sexuality. This sexuality starts fluid and coalesces into a hard-wired response to stimuli. Essentially, conditioned responses become unconditioned responses.
Sexuality might be like a sort of clay. It’s mixed in with all the conditioned responses a child develops through early experiences and then baked. Once the clay has hardened, it is impossible to change the conditioned responses - they become innate. Thus, your attraction to brown-eyed women may now (I assume you’ve hit puberty) be an innate response. Or, if it was learned after puberty, may be a conditioned response subject to change. Or, while developed before puberty you may have never incorporated your attraction for brown-eyed women into your sexuality and may still be a conditioned response subject to change. See how complex this is?
It is my opinion that homosexuality develops during pre-adolescence and become hard wired during puberty. Homosexual desire somehow becomes hard-wired and like any innate response, impossible to eliminate. Thus we can say that someone is “homosexually oriented”. I suppose that you could say someone whose attractions become incorporated into his or her sexuality is also oriented that way. So maybe you are oriented to brown eyed women. One possible test would be to measure your attraction to non-eyed women. If you are not attracted at all to blue eyed women it’s an orientation, and if you are somewhat, it’s a preference.
Anyway, that’s the difference between an orientation and a preference. The last three paragraphs are somewhat controversial but the first two are universally accepted by psychologists.
I'm sorry, but I must disagree with virtually EVERYTHING you have said in this whole thread, esp. at the end.
From ALL anecdotal and written evidence I have ever witnessed, in EVERY case, the male Sodomite was EXCESSIVELY CLOSE to their mother and/or had no father or male role model at home during the first three years of their life...and the female Sodomite was EXCESSIVELY CLOSE to their father and/or had no mother or female role model at home during the first three years of life.
Ever heard of "the formative years?" They're called that for a reason...because that is when the basis of your attitudes and belief system is developed. In short, a BABY or SMALL CHILD DOES NOT CHOOSE to have a propensity to prefer their own sex---their PARENTS' BEHAVIOUR toward them causes it.
Since people do not have RECOLLECTION from their BIRTH, as far as THEY know, they were "born that way"...they truthfully don't KNOW any different. But just as someone who is abused physically, mentally or emotionally in other ways didn't CAUSE their own resulting emotional state, they CAN get psychotherapy to REVERSE their abnormal emotional state and return them to a "normal" state---with time.
When people CHOOSE to have sex---either heterosexual or homosexual---that is a CHOICE they make. No one FORCES them to CHOOSE one way or the other. NATURE, however, tells them that HETEROSEXUAL SEX is the NATURAL way. Animals out in nature don't mate with their own sex! It isn't NATURAL---i.e. it isn't of nature.
Something I've thought about recently is that it isn't what someone does in their BEDROOM that causes the problem. It's the fact that Sodomites CONSTANTLY want to TELL us about what they do in their bedroom!
If they would keep their BEDROOM activities in their BEDROOM and OUT of the WORKPLACE and SCHOOLS, and QUIT CHOOSING to ACT and TALK EFFEMINATE (in the case of males) or as a BUTCH (in the case of females), NO ONE WOULD HAVE A CLUE WHAT THEY DO IN THEIR BEDROOM!!!!!!!
I repeat:
It's NOT what they do in their BEDROOM that is the problem...It's what they do and how they CHOOSE to BEHAVE IN PUBLIC, such as at WORK and SCHOOL!
Believe me, Sodomites CHOOSE to ACT and SPEAK the way they do. If they WANTED to, they could ACT and SPEAK without the lisp/swoosh or butch-type voice or walk. If they couldn't, there wouldn't be such things as ACTORS in Hollywood...they ACT!
I like to think of it like hearing a black person who CHOOSES to SPEAK and ACT in "jive" (or whatever they call it). They CHOOSE to do it---they're NOT "born that way!" And neither are Sodomites!