You like their quirks or you don't? People debate things. As a GM, I grew to accept the debates as part of the hobby.
Your GM is the problem. If all players want 100% RAW and the GM doesn't, his rulings will cause situations. He needs to get on board with the players. Simple.
So now players are lenient about the rules? Which is it: 100% rules or pretty lenient? That's a conflict in your thread.
Switch to Degenesis. It has less rules to argue about. 3.75 (Pathfinder) has so many rules, unless you have group consensus on play, you can argue them forever. It's why I refuse to run that version of D&D.