You only need to apologize when people are upset about something... that's the whole point of apologizing. If you went home today and watched tv and said to yourself "that guys a faggot", would you go into work the next day and send a mass email apologizing to everyone who would be offended by that?

Obviously it's not an OK thing to say, but the unfortunate reality is people don't attach meaning to the worst slurs anymore. Words turn into just different levels of insult. When I hear people call someone a faggot, I don't think "he just called him gay". It's the same thing we went through with the word gay being used as a negative adjective.

The guy is obviously not a homophobe and he made a mistake. Nobody said it was ok to use the word, they are saying it's ok to look at the situation and the person and realize that he just said something in the heat of the moment that he didn't really mean.