It's in the Water.

Experts yakety-yak about whether environment makes us gay, but they miss its true power in our lives. Where we're raised doesn't dictate if we're gay, but it sure tells how we're gay.

Want proof? Talk to any queer who hails from the South. Forget cotton; our biggest export is camp. We don't have to manufacture it. We live it. From our high-toned foxhunts to our boozy barbecues, we Southerners are larger than life. We're often silly, sometimes stupid, but always a hoot.

Even our hypocrisy is charming. Folks ignore unpleasant things because they're unpleasant, for heaven's sake! What more need be said? Thus it's a special challenge down South to embark on a queer life. If you come out in Bismarck, you're a homo. If you come out in Biloxi, you're a party pooper. Lots of us who want to live openly pull up stakes and go, but not without regret: You can leave the party, but you still hear the music.

Which brings us to It's in the Water. In this wildly broad farce first-time writer-director Kelli Herd imagines the panic that sweeps a snooty Southern burg when two of its most prominent citizens--a woman and a man--meet their separate soul mates and realize they're gay. In telling this story, Herd--herself a Texas society girl who came out as a lesbian only after marriage and motherhood--re-creates a world of magnolia-drenched bigotry that may reopen old wounds for gay Southern refugees.

Herd's story (and there's a lot of it) centers on cool, chic Alex (Keri Jo Chapman), who's on a collision course with her socialite mother and her banker husband. On the other side of the collision is Grace (Teresa Garrett), a nurse newly back in town after moving away and coming out. Meanwhile, Mark (Derrick Sanders), the earnest son of the local newspaper baron, meets Tomas (Timothy Vahle), a Latin lover who wanders mistakenly into the ex-gay meeting where Mark has been trying to straighten up. The plot thickens from there.

Herd envisions a Texas-size story, but her inexperience tells; parts of the film are frankly amateurish. Still, she's a natural. Where one scene goes wrong, the next is surprisingly powerful and true. (Sometimes truer than she might wish, it must be said; the film's black and white characters relate in an uneasy limbo that's all too real.)

Missteps and all, Herd's audiences like what they see; the film won audience favorite or best picture awards at several 1997 film festivals. For Herd, It's in the Water is just a start. But it's also a welcome sign that times may be changing for us long-gone gays who sometimes wish we were in Dixie.