🌈 Pride, Power & Plant Medicine: 7 LGBTQ+ Icons Who Helped Blaze the Trail

Pride Month at Canapé DC isn’t just about rainbows and revelry—it’s about honoring the warriors who stood up, spoke out, and sparked change. The LGBTQ+ community has long been at the front lines of advocacy, mutual aid, and herbal healing—especially when it comes to challenging stigma around plant medicine.

This month, we’re spotlighting seven extraordinary individuals—healers, rebels, artists, and visionaries—who’ve shaped the culture of care from the underground to the Capitol steps. Some are legends who lit the first sparks. Others are still shaping what’s next.

Let’s get into the stories of the bold, the brave, and the beautifully green-hearted. 🌿

🌟 MEL BOOZER

The Vibe: Intellectual firestarter. First Black student body president at Dartmouth. First openly gay person nominated for Vice President at a major U.S. political convention.

The Legacy: Mel Boozer didn’t just walk into white institutions—he took the mic. His 1980 DNC speech delivered a line that still resonates:

“Would you ask me how I dare to compare the civil rights struggle with the struggle for gay and lesbian rights? I ask you, how dare you not?”

Fun Fact: He once publicly debated Pat Buchanan on national television—and absolutely smoked him with logic.

Why We Love Him: Mel’s voice lives on in every intersectional movement for dignity and access, from HIV care to justice-based reform.

🕊️ DENNIS PERON

The Vibe: San Francisco legend. Co-author of Prop 215. Ran a cannabis collective out of a Victorian mansion in the Castro.

The Legacy: Dennis fought the system with love and plant medicine after watching his partner die from AIDS. He opened the first public cannabis access point in America and once said:

“I came out of the closet and into the streets.”

Fun Fact: He also ran for President—and for Governor of California in 1998 on a platform of peace, pot, and people.

Why We Love Him: He believed all use is medical and all healing is a right, not a privilege. Without Dennis, medical cannabis laws would look very different today.

💃 LAGANJA ESTRANJA

📍 Born: Dallas, TX | 🏳️‍🌈 Identity: Queer, genderfluid, drag queen, choreographer

The Vibe: Sparkly educator. Death drop diva. Drag meets de-stigmatization.

The Legacy: Known for her iconic flips and fierce persona on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Laganja is also a trained dancer with an MFA in choreography. She turned her platform into a megaphone for queer visibility and elevated conversations around herbal wellness and identity.

Fun Fact: Laganja taught cannabis dance classes, designed her own rolling papers, and once rapped about terpenes. Yes, terpenes.

Why We Love Her: She’s a walking reminder that joy is resistance and that healing can wear 6-inch heels.

🌿 SOLONJE BURNETT

📍 Born: Brooklyn, NY | 🏳️‍🌈 Identity: Queer, AfroFuturist, culture strategist

The Vibe: Sacred disruptor. Conscious connector. Curator of ritual and inclusion.

The Legacy: Solonje co-founded Humble Bloom, a platform where the plant meets purpose. She centers the BIPOC experience in healing spaces that often leave us out. Her work connects ancestral ritual, green care, and future-forward wellness.

Fun Fact: She once hosted a plant-centered sound bath under a full moon while educating about racial equity in the wellness industry.

Why We Love Her: Solonje makes healing spiritual and political—and invites others to bloom boldly in their own truth.

🔥 BUCK ANGEL

📍 Born: San Fernando Valley, CA | 🏳️‍🌈 Identity: Trans man, mental health educator, wellness advocate

The Vibe: Iconoclastic. Loud. Unapologetic. Trailblazer with a mission.

The Legacy: Buck transitioned in his 30s after surviving addiction, dysphoria, and depression. He became the first openly trans man in adult film—and used his visibility to open dialogues around gender, identity, and care. He later launched Pride Wellness, offering plant-based products tailored for LGBTQ+ needs.

Fun Fact: He’s a licensed bodyworker and trains healthcare workers on trauma-informed care for trans patients.

Why We Love Him: Buck keeps it raw, real, and rooted in lived experience—and fights for a world where all bodies are respected.

🌌 ETHOS DE LEON

The Vibe: Ritualist. Street medic. Activist mystic. Part visionary, part paramedic.

The Legacy: In 2015, Ethos was arrested for lighting ceremonial joints on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Their life work is a fusion of frontline protest and ancestral healing. As founder of Age of Aquarius, they blend somatics, political education, and decolonial pedagogy in spaces built for the Global Majority.

Fun Fact: Their book “Fuck Your Love & Light” is a mic-drop on spiritual bypassing and the need for real, messy, embodied care.

Why We Love Them: Ethos is building a new model of street medicine—where trauma care, plant wisdom, and radical love meet in the middle of the fire.

✨ WHY THIS MATTERS

LGBTQ+ folks—especially Black, brown, trans, and disabled voices—have always been central to both the liberation and legalization movements surrounding plant medicine. They’ve done the labor, taken the risks, and created care models in the margins.

At Canapé DC, we honor that legacy. We believe healing is collective. That justice smells like freedom. And that Pride is not a brand—it’s a bond to those who came before us, and a commitment to those still fighting for access and dignity.

This Pride Month, we light one up in gratitude—for the rebels, the healers, the artists, and the organizers who helped carve this path in green.

🕯️ Here’s to the ones who turned protest into ritual and lit the way for all of us. 🌿

With pride and reverence,
—Team Canapé