BREAKING: Houston, TX– A massive “false goddess,” pro-abortion statue has been erected at the University of Houston’s Family Plaza, to be displayed for the majority of 2024, despite protests from concerned local Christians and students.
The 8-foot-tall gold statue, called “NOW,” displays a nude figure of a woman with goat horns, tentacle arms and a lace collar around her neck. The sculptor, Shahzia Sikander, claims that the statue is a homage to the late pro-abortion U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Badger Ginsburg.
“The luminous figure is a nod to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as seen in the detail adorning her collar. With Ginsburg’s death and the reversal of Roe, there was a setback to women’s constitutional progress,” sculptor Shahzia Sikander wrote in her artist statement.
“The figure’s hair is braided into spiraling ‘horns,’ which mimic the movement of the arms and express the figure’s sovereignty and autonomy,” Sikander said.
“Femininity to me is the tension between women and power: how society perceives such a dynamic and how erasure is enacted by the social forces that shape women’s lives. Throughout literature, the notion of the female has been in conversation with the visible/invisible divide, the feminine as the monstrous, the abject, the fecund, the immense, and the vulnerable.”
Christians believe that the statue’s connotations are far more sinister. Texas Scorecard reported that the statue may actually reference Ashteroth, the ancient Middle Eastern deity of sexuality and prostitution.
Ashteroth is mentioned multiple times in the Bible. She is a false goddess in the Old Testament, one of the several gods Israel turned to instead of God. Her worship was a direct violation of the first of the Ten Commandments God gave to the Israelites:
“You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments,” (Exodus 20:3-6).
According to The Dallas Express, “the sculpture NOW and its counterpart Witness make up the installation Havah… to breathe, air, life, initially erected in New York’s Madison Square Park. At the end of this month, the statue is to be displayed in a prominent courtyard at the University of Houston from February 28 to October 31.”
Dr. Maria C. Gaztambide, University of Houston (UH)’s executive director and chief curator of public art, released a statement regarding her decision to bring the statue to the Texas university.
“With Havah… to breathe, air, life, Shahzia [Sikander] demonstrates how justice is conceptually and actively vibrant across cultures and genders. And yet, while the necessity of justice is universal, it is often blindly applied. Shahzia brings to the fore the imbalances of gender and race through this exceptional work. We are proud to join forces with Madison Square Park in bringing it to fruition, while amplifying its reach beyond New York City,” she said.
University and community Christians consider the statue a public display of paganism and satanism.
“The intended message of the Medusa statue is clear: state-sanctioned, taxpayer-funded paganism. Now, this message is, apparently, on a national tour. It is no coincidence that just as testaments to our national history, a Christian history, are being reviled and quite literally demolished, monuments to the successor religion are being promoted. Heroes are being displaced by mythological monsters,” Timon Cline, editor-in-chief of the Christian publication American Reformer, told The Dallas Express.
Cline also questioned the values of the UH, and more broadly, the general promulgation of radically leftist agendas in higher education across the U.S.
“The University of Houston’s participation in this charade is beyond shameful. Any institution of higher learning worth its salt should recognize the inversion of Western tradition and morality represented in this statute. And that’s the point for all Texans: they do know what they’re doing. Such institutions are no longer worthy of support. Their incongruence with the American way of life is increasingly apparent.”
University student anti-abortion advocates affiliated with the student action arm of American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property spent months formally petitioning UH president Renu Khator to block the erection of the statue at the university.
Now, they have taken to X (formerly Twitter) to call for the public to oppose the statue’s display on campus.
