This strikes me as a classic example of the increasingly pervasive Neo-Puritan iconoclasm (mostly but not exclusively focused on statues) which while well motivated runs the risk of turning into a Talibanesque random destruction of the artifacts of history and culture which like the society from which they have sprung will always contain ambiguities and even things that are unpleasant and uncomfortable. That however IS our history and our heritage, a mixture of good and bad, light and dark, appropriate and inappropriate. Any attempt to airbrush it is like the common contemporary practice of photoshopping model's bodies (mostly women) in glossy magazines. It is false, dishonest and only results in alienating those who do not conform to increasingly narrower criteria of acceptability. I wonder how many of us would have stood up against slavery when it was the accepted norm in certain parts of the world? We are products of our time and to impose our modern enlightened standards to the art, architecture and iconography of another time is a mono-cultural fundamentalism no more helpful or wise than trying to read the Bible as literal history - indeed if the same logic that provoked the removal of theses statues was applied to the Bible or the Koran for that matter then both would be banned if not burned! There is of course the additional argument that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. The original Puritans while also well intended in overturning the excesses of the pre-Reformation Church threw away much of the richness and aesthetic beauty of church life and worship and created a form of Christianity that was strict, sterile and monochrome.It is only in latter years that some forms of Protestant Christianity have rediscovered the importance of the aesthetic in worship - Some still haven't! Let's be very careful before we throw the baby out with the bathwater again - he or she may not survive this time!
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