It’s sweeps month, and we all know what that means: lesbians on prime time. ABC delivered its entry last night with an episode of its reality TV show Wife Swap, which featured lesbian moms trading households with conservative straight Christians. What resulted was an hour of painful drama that could have been titled “When Conservatives Attack!” given the homophobia and hatred that reared its ugly head.

Based on a U.K. reality show of the same name, Wife Swap takes two families who tend to have polar-opposite qualities, and switches the wives for two weeks. For the first week, the guest wife is forced to live by the rules of the new family; for the second week, she is allowed to change the rules and institute her own.

Wife Swap premiered on ABC last fall and has fared relatively well in its competitive Wednesday night timeslot, where it airs opposite CBS’s CSI:NY and NBC’s Law and Order. Last night’s episode was watched by about seven million households, making it the tenth-ranked show overall. Among viewers aged 18-49, Wife Swap was the fifth most-watched show, with about six million viewers in that coveted age bracket. That means a major portion of the viewing audience tuned in to watch lesbian mom Kristine Luffey trade places with conservative Christian mom Kris Gillespie.

Mrs. Gillespie hails from a fundamentalist, Republican family from Texas in which she stays at home to raise three kids, while her husband, Brian, brings home the bacon. Their household is meticulously organized around “excellence,” and involves a lot of obsessive straightening of silverware and strictly timed chores. The Gillespie kids—Michael (age 16), Jackson (14), and Catherine (12)—are frighteningly well-behaved and do their chores without complaint. Although the Gillespie home is impressively mansion-like, it also feels eerily like Stepford.

In comparison, Kristine Luffey and her partner Nicki Boone, who both work outside the home, live the lives of carefree Bohemians in their messy, middle-class Arizona ranch. Their daughter, eight-year-old Elizabeth, is allowed to have a TV in her room, loudly objects to doing chores, and might be just a little spoiled by her two mommies, who want to give her the freedom to do what she wants and figure out who she is.

When Kristine and Kris trade households, what happens is both expected and surprising. Kristine brings a sense of laid-back fun to the Gillespie household, and the three children react to her new rules—which include banishing all chores and inviting their friends over for a sleepover—with the expected glee. Elizabeth is thrilled when Kris designates one day "Princess Day," and gives her a crown to wear.

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