Who among You Is Moral?

The title of this blog may sound downright biblical; in fact many definitions of morality include obedience to custom and acting in accordance with "sacred" texts, especially in matters of sexuality. For many years the Church of Wicca has had its sacred writings; thus we can claim that when we act exactly in accordance with our own sacred writings, we are by definition moral.

We Frosts do not believe that many "sacred" writings are actually moral. The Koran requires that a person convicted of theft has at least one hand cut off. The Bible requires that if a child tells a lie, (s)he shall be taken to the city gate and be stoned to death. The Old Testament is full of mayhem; indeed, Richard Dawkins writes of Jehovah's policy of scorched-earth ethnic cleansing.* Nor was Jesus above blasting a poor fig tree that didn't fruit when he ordered it to.
One of the freedoms of the Church of Wicca is in matters sexual. (Remember "If it harm none"?) For years we have been using the acronym DUPED to define what we mean. Sorry the internet doesn't faithfully follow our idiosyncratic spacing of this business, but just line up the capital letters to get to DUPED, and things will assume the place we intend. So anyhow, what do we mean when we talk of getting DUPED? We mean

no D isease

not U nder contract (as in a marriage, for example)

no unwanted P regnancy

no E xpectations

no implication of D ebt

So from the sexual point of view, if you act in accordance with our acronym, in our opinion you're sexually moral.
Yet that leaves 90 percent or so of our readers' actions still questionable by conventional standards. The Hindu word dharma may be defined as taking the right actions in your life--right actions consistent with your position in society. What this has to do with abusing children or beating your spouse is a mystery to us. Here abuse and beating are not necessarily the physical act of applying a rod it where it hurts the most. They can also mean mental cruelty.
How then do we define a moral person? Is (s)he simply a decent person, honest and fair in their actions? We believe that it is rational to evaluate people by their life style and their actions: When they commit an act, the act has consequences. When you yourself act decently and honorably, you will eventually gather around you people who are motivated in the same way--as explicitly articulated in the Wiccan tenet concerning the Law of Attraction. Thus the morality of a person can easily be estimated according to the morality of their friends.

What say you? Is decent or honorable or something else a better term than moral?

* Richard Dawkins The God Delusion