Are Roman Catholic leaders modern Pharisees?

Andrew Sullivan is a conservative gay blogger, married, and a Roman Catholic.  As the RC Bishops ramp up their opposition to civil marriage in the UK (and in the US, of course) he writes:

Any sign that the Catholic hierarchy might sympathize with gay people, defend them against hate or marginalization, or recognize their human dignity ... is over the horizon. 

This is a church now intent on erasing from visibility a small minority of human beings, while waging a campaign to keep them as second class citizens in their own countries and as subhuman "objectively disordered" beings in their own church. They cannot even speak our name. Because were they to see us as the human beings we are, if they had to confront the actual experienced reality of our lives, if they actually had a conversation with us, and engaged the problem rather than dismissing it as "madness", their pretense would be exposed. 

The leaders of the current Catholic hierarchy are the Pharisees of our time. They are the people Jesus came to liberate us from. And he does. And he will.