consistency and ethical positions

[gumpzilla]

One issue that crops up again and again in discussions here is the logical consistency of various ethical "systems." I use the scare quotes because I think most people here do not have anything that resembles a fully fleshed out ethical framework for making decisions that they logically work out from the ground up. It is assumed that such consistency is a good thing in and of itself. But is logical consistency of your ethical beliefs a necessary (it's clearly not sufficient) condition to be ethical? I don't think this is obvious. And if it isn't, then in what way (other than perhaps aesthetically) is a logically consistent ethics superior to one that lacks that feature?