[tangent] That's part of the attraction to NoSQL as well. You just serialize your objects to JSON or something else (probably already being done if you target the web). It's simple.
Back to ORMs, you can't avoid SQL wrappers at least to help w/ injections, and you probably want a layer that serializes/deserializes your objects as well. Once you've written that a few times it's boring so you abstract it. ORMs are pretty much inevitable when writing the common web app.
ORMs should borrow good things from SQL, like LINQ. Mainstream languages are better now than when SQL was created. I mean, it's not the exact syntax you like right? I prefer writing code rather than preparing and parsing strings. Plus if you ever decide to swap out the backend it's far easier when things are loosely coupled.
SQL is akin to JS in the browser in that you need a library to abstract away the implementation differences or you'll be tightly coupled to a specific one. Maybe you don't need to run on all backends simultaneously but options are always nice.
It all depends what the task is anyway though.