sqlx (https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx) is my go-to as well. mgutz/dat (https://github.com/mgutz/dat) and dbr (https://github.com/gocraft/dbr) are also more ORM-like alternatives if that's what you need—query builders with the option to use raw SQL for more complex queries. I also lean on purse (https://github.com/smotes/purse) for keeping my SQL in separate files, but I'd love to see something like Clojure's yesql.

I think the likelihood of seeing an ActiveRecord-style ORM in Go is slim: ActiveRecord is a core part of Rails and can therefore make a lot of safe assumptions about its environment. Any ORM for Go can't do that to the same extent, and big Rails-style frameworks don't gain much of a following in Go.