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Interesting. The more I hear about this Blue Rose thing, the more I want to look into it.
Blue Rose works excellently as a deconstructive commentary about the modern day political correctness, with the nation oh-so-progressive people in the setting making big deal of their superiority to backwards, politically incorrect rednecks next door which are, in the geographical and military terms, the main bloody barrier standing between them and the local equivalent of Mordor.
As a setting played straight, not so much.
Here's my opinion on the starting point of the thread.
The main problem with attempting a serious discussion of racism in DnD is that there is largely no such thing as a racism in DnD. Certainly not when it comes to races like orcs
There is only being realistic. As opposed to being a drooling moron who thinks that people who were dedicated to waging a war of extermination on his whole race and culture for thousands of years, and who are objectively, measurably stained with corruption, never mind inferior in mental capacity, would somehow stop trying to kill, rape, and eat him, if only he tries to stop being bigoted towards them.
Just by trying to approach DnD as written with any degree of seriousness you pretty much automatically must come to the conclusion that nature trumps nurture completely and plenty of sapient being are incorrigibly hostile and dangerous, because that's what the rules and the setting tell you in no uncertain terms. Regarding a lot of races on Golarion in particular you might argue that genocide is not only wholly justified but is a moral imperative.
But of course, the authors are quite uncomfortable with drawing these obvious conclusions from the premises they have selected for their setting. Whether because they have selected those premises only because those were present in the previous editions in DnD, or because they are simply afraid of being branded as heretics, if they explore what having s$** like Golarion ogres or serpentfolk in your world really means, I don't know. As the premises in question aren't going anywhere any time soon, you simply cannot expect anything non-cartoonish on matters of race and racism from PF products. The authors of this AP did not make the wise choice of skirting around the whole matter, and the result was predictably unsatisfying. Because the only real alternative to "not feeling real", while staying in the predefined confines of the setting, was feeling soul-crushingly grimdark.
Honestly I prefer silliness and unreality. They are easier to spot-fix.
Much the same goes for same-sex and multiracial (multispecies, to be more exact, in cases when no viable children can be expected) relationships. The setting of Golation is 90% filled with societies which had existed for >300 years in stable states. Such stability is, of course, not compatible with social acceptance of any relationship not resulting in procreation. Before we even take into account dangerous man-eating monsters behind every tree and rock, which should obviously contribute to mortality rate, mind you. Therefore any portrayal of such relationships - and, particularly, reactions to them - should be completely cartoonish and based on not thinking about this stuff too hard. Because conclusions of thinking about them too hard are going to offend some of the readers as certainly as the conclusion that maybe if we just f#$%^&g kill, say, every chromatic dragon on Golarion that would objectively make the world a massively better place for everybody who is not a chromatic dragon.
About same-sex relationships, a thing to note, is that those are controversial only in nations where that's a sin. Namely, a big portion of real life earth, including all nations which have a strong relationship with abrahamanic religions (christians, hebrew and muslim countries).
In, say, ancient Greek or ancient Rome, it wouldn't really make a big diference, or create a big controversy.
If you consider that being stoned to death does not make a big difference... Which was the standard punishment for having undue interest in your fellow legionnaries in legions of republican Rome, of course.
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The setting of Golation is 90% filled with societies which had existed for >300 years in stable states. Such stability is, of course, not compatible with social acceptance of any relationship not resulting in procreation.
So... no society which found something like a celibate clergy socially acceptable could possibly survive for more than 300 years?
I'm thinking there might be a flaw in your assumptions.
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Much the same goes for same-sex and multiracial (multispecies, to be more exact, in cases when no viable children can be expected) relationships. The setting of Golation is 90% filled with societies which had existed for >300 years in stable states. Such stability is, of course, not compatible with social acceptance of any relationship not resulting in procreation. Before we even take into account dangerous man-eating monsters behind every tree and rock, which should obviously contribute to mortality rate, mind you. Therefore any portrayal of such relationships - and, particularly, reactions to them - should be completely cartoonish and based on not thinking about this stuff too hard. Because conclusions of thinking about them too hard are going to offend some of the readers as certainly as the conclusion that maybe if we just f#$%^&g kill, say, every chromatic dragon on Golarion that would objectively make the world a massively better place for everybody who is not a chromatic dragon.
I am going to sideline the multispecies relations for now, and come back to them in a separate post.
As far as same sex goes, I think you are conflating real world history with Golarion history. There are um...kind of some major differences between our world and Golarion. For one, we don't have clerics who have real demonstratable magical powers that derive their power from gods who directly and undeniably communicate to their clergy. Nor do we have objective alignment where people can literally cast a spell and determine if someone is evil or not.
Golarion does. Having active dieties who are OBJECTIVELY good is going to have a huge frigging impact on how societies develop. There is no misreading of scripture or misinterpretation when a cleric of a good god preaches that gay marriage is wrong, and then immediately loses his powers, or has a herald show up to correct him. In such a society, where good dieties are worshipped at all you simply won't get the sort of persecution developing. Secular authorities with those viewpoints would then get pressure from the clergy and lay followers on the issues.
Especially given that you have several good dieties that partake or have partaken in same sex relationships (see Desna-Shelyn-Sarenae). Sure neutral and evil dieties might care less about that, but evil dieties...are well evil, and "same sex marriage is wrong" probably loses some of its authority when it takes place at a baby barbecue. And the neutral dieties tend to be focused on specific things that would get clergy that focused on issues related to sex weird sideway looks from there associates and friends.
As for procreation. Again...you have individuals who can magically remove all sickness and harm via relatively low level magic. My guess is that infant and childhood mortality amongst civilized races is much lower than it would be in a society on Earth of comparable tech levels. The need for procreation to keep pace with monster-induced mortality is less of a concern when that might be the only major cause of mass mortality in some areas. And it's not like the monsters are only targeting humans...their pretty much eating/killing each other a lot of the time.
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on the multispecies issue. If you are referring to Orcs versus other races, than yeah I think this is a bit of a weird situation. There is definitely tension in the community at large, which extends into Paizo itself, between having mortal races are almost purely evil (which I think tends to be associated with more of the "old school" feel), verses more nuanced views that would put most of the more monstrous races as being neutralish, with culture/nurture being responsible for whether a race is evil or not. It's a hard tightrope to walk without annoying one side or the other, which is why we get situations that seem contradictory between APs/CS books/etc.
Personally I dislike mortal races which are always evil. By providing some examples that contradict that viewpoint in Golarion, it gives me as a GM more freedom to interpret things, but also can lead to weird situations like those that maybe pop up in Trunau.