The Double Standards in Hollywood or How I learnt to Not Say Inappropriate Things the Hard Way

So Brett Ratner has stepped down from producing the 84th Academy Awards next year, and Eddie Murphy will no longer host the awards either. All this after Ratner quipped that "Rehearsals are for fags" when promoting his new movie 'Tower Heist (2011), a phrase which apparently insiders in Hollywood deemed "unforgivable".
Now is it me or are Americans a little more up tight than us over here?
I'm not saying Ratner is, or isn't, a homophobe. I don't know the guy. I also don't condone what he said (especially in the position he is in). I do however think that his comment in no way suggests he is.
I mean I walked past a girl yesterday who, while shaking her I-phone about, said to her friend "my phone's being gay again, it's not working". Now obviously this is a ludicrous sentence - phone's, to my knowledge, don't have a sexual preference (unleess the picture below is a massive phone orgy...)

Nor do they have a gender, but regardless, that girl's comment doesn't make her a homophobe - sure she's without a good vocabulary, and ignorant, but not a homophobe. It's just unfortunate that the word is still used as such a derogatory term without people even thinking. Ratner shouldn't have said it, but an apology should have been sufficient in my opinion.
Then again are these same people pulling the strings, the ones who created such uproar after Ricky Gervais hosted the Golden Globes earlier this year? I watched the awards show recently with my brother... What was all the fuss about? Sure he had a dig at a number of people, and took a few jokes too far, but It's an awards' show and he's a comic! What did they expect? (It's actually very funny,  check it out for yourself below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvHXzP2SpLA

Then again maybe it's the fact he's British and we're just used to it. With our over the top panel shows where comics can pretty much say what they want...Such as Frankie Boyle on Mock the Week here...

. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEzEKQ0fFxE


Not that this comment didn't land the BBC with some complaints, and he went on to leave the show soon after, but it's hardly stopped Boyle getting work (he's still hosting panel shows himself, and appearing on them).
The again do the majority of Americans even care? Is it in fact just The Academy who would have acted in this way? Would the British Academy of Film and Television have done the same? Did Ratner have to leave?

If so, then is there an issue of double standards here; I mean in 1977 Roman Polanski was arrested for having sex with a 13 year old girl. He still went on to win Golden globes AND an academy award for The Pianist (2002). So with that I think I've finally got it... you can win awards regardless of what you say or do, you just can't produce/host the damn things unless you're squeaky clean... Only in Hollywood...