because an ORM has nothing to do with writing your SQL for you. You can use textual SQL with an ORM and an ORM like SQLAlchemy has a query language that mirrors the structure of SQL in any case. nobody is taking your SQL away. Additionally, you most certainly do want a tool that will write most of your DML for you, there is no deep wisdom or joy in writing the same INSERT / UPDATE statement over and over again.
>"ORM-light tools that coerce responses into native structs and allow for type-checking are less offensive to me." - that is...an ORM?
Yeah...its a light ORM that focuses on turning a result set into an object but not the syntax remapping of queries. Object mapping is almost universally liked but ORMs usually include query syntax mappings and not the addition of a transaction lifecycle into your data objects.