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The South Australian Liberal party is standing by an election candidate who said same-sex marriage is not real, homosexuality can open up “demonic realms” and gender transitioning is an “illusion”.
Carston Woodhouse is running for the seat of Wright in Adelaide’s north in the state’s upcoming elections, with early voting beginning on Saturday.
But the incumbent member for Wright, Labor’s Blair Boyer, on Wednesday pointed to the conservative candidate’s “shocking and extreme” comments as a symptom of the Liberals’ “lurch to the right”.
In a press conference, Boyer – the SA minister for education, training and skills – played clips of Woodhouse speaking on the ElijahFire Christian podcast, on which he has been a guest multiple times.
“There is no argument for abortion … even the whole rape [and] incest thing,” Woodhouse says. In one clip, he says: “Who knows what demonic realms we’ve opened up to the world … by accepting homosexuality.” At another point, he declares: “Feminism is demonic.”
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In the conversations, Woodhouse references rightwing influencers Michael Knowles, Ben Shapiro and the late Charlie Kirk.
Speaking on the podcast in February 2025, Woodhouse said the LGBTQ+ community was pushing its ideology on to others and that separating gender and sex was “rubbish”.
“There’s this whole reality pretending that same-sex marriage is real – it’s not. It ignores decades of the reality of observations of the dynamics between a man and a woman.
“God designed those interplays, so if you take those dynamics away from a child, or from society, you destroy its fabric. You can’t pretend, it just doesn’t work,” he said.
He adds there is “this illusion that you can somehow change your sex, which you can’t”.
When asked about Woodhouse’s comments, the state Liberal leader, Ashton Hurn, told Guardian Australia she was focused on “what matters”.
“I do not share the candidate’s views on those issues and am focused on speaking to South Australians about our policies to make their lives better.”
“In recent days, Health Minister Chris Picton has shown what can happen when you’re not focused on what matters”, she said, referencing the imbroglio involving Picton’s release of a private email that was incorrectly assumed to be from the wife of a cancer patient.
Hurn said many people within political parties held differing opinions, and that Woodhouse was “allowed to have his views”, in comments reported by the ABC.
“I’m not going to stop someone from having an opinion,” she said.
On the SA Liberal party’s website, Woodhouse is described as “strong, principled and community-minded” and someone whose leadership “restores fairness for all South Australians”.
Boyer described Woodhouse’s stance as “insulting”, “an attack” and “astonishing”.
“I would characterise these views as shocking and extreme. I would challenge anyone to listen to these excerpts and these videos … and suggest otherwise,” he told reporters.
He said Woodhouse’s candidacy was a result of “last-minute scramble” by the Liberal party. Wright is a safe Labor seat, having been held by the party since 1997.
“The ramifications of having such a shambolic and chaotic preselection process is that the political party, in this case the South Australian Liberal party, does not have the time to do the proper vetting it should do.
“There’s a reason these things take time, for all political parties, because you want to make sure that candidates who are running under your banner are fit and proper people to be standing to be a member of parliament in the South Australian parliament.”
“The people who hold those extreme views are now not just people on the fringes of a major political party … they are people who are actually preselected candidates for public office at a state election.”
South Australia voted 62.5% in favour of same-sex marriage in the 2017 national postal survey.
Woodhouse was approached for comment.
