1. pov·er·ty
ˈpävərtē/
noun
1. the state of being extremely poor.
"thousands of families are living in abject poverty"
synon
yms:
penury, destitution, pauperism, pauperdom, beggary, indigence,pennilessness, impoverish
ment, neediness, need, hardship,impecuniousness More
o the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount.
"the poverty of her imagination"
synonyms: scarcity, deficiency, dearth, shortage, paucity, insufficiency, absence,lack More
o the renunciation of the right to individual ownership of property as part of a religious
vow.

2. The “Poverty” of Sexual
Orientation
In the grave new world of “male,” “female,” and fifty other
Facebook “gender-identity” categories purportedly describing everything
in between, maybe it’s time to ask once more, for context: Just what is
sexual orientation?
For example, here I am, a man married for a quarter-century (yes, to
a woman, just to be clear); we have eleven children. That should make
me “straight,” right? But am I “straight” enough? Set aside the dizzying
rabbit-hole of sexual identity for the moment. In contrast, it seems the
only thing secular culture wants to consider regarding sexualattraction is
whether I’m sexually attracted to men (I’m gay), women (I’m straight),
or both (I’m bisexual). So, yes, I’m sexually attracted to some women,
certainly, but notall women. This makes me “straight”?
If we can have fifty-something flavors of gender identity, why not more
than the three categories describing sexual orientation? Shouldn’t the
“orientation” label include thereasons why I’m attracted to some women
but not all women? For example, I’m attracted to brunette women rather
than blondes. Other preferences come to mind—a certain body type, a
certain facial profile, a certain way of speaking, a certain sense of humor.
Am I merely a “heterosexual” or am I really a “body-mass-index-specific,
facio-centric, voco-determinative, humor-dependent brunette-
erosexual”? Can “straight” adequately describe my “real” sexual
orientation?

3. Here is the problem: sexual orientation is merely a calculation derived
from collecting data—data about our experience of
sexual attraction toward other persons considered over a certain period
of time.
To be clear, sexual attraction is supposed to be at the service of love (or
the communion of persons), but it is not love itself—it’s an impulse or
desire that we experience without willing it. Rather, we must respond to
the impulse through the use of our intellect and will. Thus, sexual
attraction is designed to lead to us loving a real human person.
This also means that sexual “orientation”—being an
impersonal collection of information about sexual attraction—is not
only farther removed from “love” than is sexual attraction, but it’s also a
more clearly “reductive” or “impoverished” category because it
actually removes the value of the human person by focusing squarely on
the sexual “values” of a person and not the person himself. It’s
an abstraction that treats the human person as an object, which we are
not supposed to do.
At least my above “brunette-erosexual orientation” is less reductive than
“straight” because it begins to point to “this” particular woman rather
than simply “a” woman. Even so, sexual attraction does not exist so that
we can objectify other persons by analyzing them to see whether I find
their sexual values attractive or not. The “poverty” of sexual orientation
is that it ultimately distracts us from treating persons as persons.
Sex Drive and the “Test-Drive”
Let’s use a fairly simple analogy to put this in perspective. Every time we
experience an impulse of sexual attraction, it’s like we’ve been suddenly

4. whisked away unwillingly and placed in the driver’s seat of a car that we
can “test-drive”—the car is already running, but it’s in “park” and not
“drive” (to put it in “drive” we have to choose or will to do so).
So, look around—what is it about this car that appeals to you? Should
you actuallydrive the car or leave it in “park” and get out of the driver’s
seat? You have to decide what to do next.
That’s how sexual attraction works: we experience it and
then must choose what to do next with it. Every time. After enough “test-
drive” opportunities, looking around to see how this or that car appeals
to us, we even begin to collect enough data to create a “blueprint” that
illustrates the kind of vehicle we always seem to end up sitting in. Each
time we’re “whisked away,” there seems to be a pattern—the car’s always
blue, it always has tilt-steering, power brakes, etc.
The generic car “blueprint” is like sexual orientation. It collects the data
on all the cars, so you begin to have some sense of expectation as to what
car you’ll end up in during each potential test-drive. Yet, the truth is that
it’s not the blueprint that’s important or even essential—you can’t test-
drive a blueprint. You can only test-drive a real car.
In other words, what’s “real” is sexual attraction (each car itself), not
sexual orientation (the abstract blueprint that describes a collection of
cars).
But this car analogy can take us further. During each test-drive (each
experience of sexual desire), we have to decide first whether to put the
already-running car in gear and take it somewhere. The problem is that
not all destinations are equally safe. Where will this particular sexual
attraction take us if we choose to put it in gear? Will it be a dead-end

5. street, like pornography? Will it be a hit-and-run, like adultery or
fornication? Or, will this test-drive in an attractive car also take us to
the destination we desire—the experience of real love with a real person?
When we make the right choice, our sexual attraction, like the attractive
car, can be the vehicle that transports us to a loving communion of
persons. That’s what it’s meant to do. But, once this happens, something
else unexpected happens to our magical “test-drives”—more and more,
we only want to test-drive the car that brings us to ourbeloved, our
spouse. Sure, sexual attraction often whisks us away—even when we’re
married for 40 years—and tempts us with different “test-drives,” but
only one car now takes us where we really should be going. So we leave
those other running motors in “park” and get out of those driver’s seats,
waiting for the one car.
True “Orientation Change”
Having said all this, here’s the real hinge upon which this analogy turns,
and upon which we can vividly see the bankruptcy of sexual orientation
when compared to sexualattraction.
Once we’ve found the one car (real spousal love), the sexual orientation
“blueprint” remains not only “unreal” but it also gradually becomes
increasingly inaccurate. In fact, with the passing of time, what we had
once carefully put in our automotive blueprint (the data collected from
our experience of sexual-attraction “test-drives”) no longer describes the
vehicle we’re driving. We’re driving the one car—not the blueprint—and
like all cars, they change with time. All those blueprint features of the
appealing souped-up roadster of yesteryear begin showing their mileage.

6. Backing out of the analogy, in real terms, the blueprint of sexual
orientation no longer “fits” the lived experience of sexual attraction one
feels toward one’s spouse once timehas changed the hair color from dark
to gray, the body type from thin to not-so-thin, etc. For the longtime
married couple, the sexual attraction that led to a loving spousal
communion of persons so long ago can now be seen in its proper light.
Rather than being sexually attracted to some generic-blueprint “her”
because of certain youthful or pristine sexual values, the husband of 50
years remains sexually attracted to his wife of 50 years precisely because
her uniquely personal sexual values belong only to her, the beloved—not
because they still match some 50-year-old blueprint.
Simply put, sexual orientation is a concept that loses all of its meaning
once sexualattraction actually does its intended job. Once you willingly
subordinate each and every experience of sexual attraction to your love
for your spouse, your “orientation” shifts to a specific one, not an
abstract group. If you want to call something “orientation change,” this is
it.
My sexual “orientation,” therefore, really isn’t “straight” or even
“brunette-erosexual.” My real orientation actually is a unique person and
has a name: so, in case you’re curious, my orientation is named “Sue.”