 Encouraged by the success, he founds "Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners".Among its first members are 20-year-old closeted student Joe Cooper and an older gay couple Gethin and Jonathan, whose bookshop (called Gay's the Word) they use as headquarters.LGSM faces opposition from the mining community who do not wish to associate with them, as well as within the gay community who feel that the miners have mistreated them in the past.