Judeo-Christian values do not conflate equality with sameness. But the Left rejects any suggestion of innate sexual differences. That is why the president of Harvard University nearly lost his job for merely suggesting that one reason there are fewer women in engineering and science faculties is that the female and male brains differ in their capacities in these areas.

The service was conducted by the Rev. Walt Day of Baseball Chapel, a ministry that provides all 30 major league teams with a chaplain. Moments earlier, Day had turned a stuffy storage room in the visitors clubhouse into a chapel for five Detroit Tigers.

Similar contrasts in the size of the Sox congregations and others have seized the attention of baseball chaplains across the country.

We stand at an interpretive divide. If Israel's critics are right, the Gaza withdrawal will improve Palestinian attitudes toward Israel, leading to an end of incitement and a steep drop in attempted violence, followed by a renewal of negotiations and a full settlement. Logic requires, after all, that if "occupation" is the problem, ending it, even partially, will lead to a solution.

The Violence Against Women Act, which was passed in 1994, must have also played a role, focusing federal money and attention. But all of these efforts are part of a larger story. The decline in family violence is part of a whole web of positive, mutually reinforcing social trends. To put it in old-fashioned terms, America is becoming more virtuous. Americans today hurt each other less than they did 13 years ago. They are more likely to resist selfish and shortsighted impulses.