Anyone know how likely this is to change [soon]?
It's true that Red supports 32-bit platforms only, but porting toolchain to 64-bit is a planned transition, which was never "debated about"; Catalina just forced this issue on most developers, including the Red team, and the actual question was if addressing it should come before all the other priorities, to the detriment of overall speed of development and release of major features.
The debate thing was just the impression I came away with. Things like this post[0] from late 2018 saying
> We are currently 32-bit only, and need to decide the best path for adding 64-bit support, should we elect to do so.
(and some other back-and-forth I can’t find at the moment) left me thinking it was an open question. I’m glad to hear it’s on the roadmap.
Really unfortunate that you cannot give Red a try, but I think it's still worth checking out in a VM of your choice. Drop by one of the Gitter rooms if you need help to get started: