De-Googled Android ROMs

No. I'm on GrapheneOS and not tied to Google.You must be thinking of the Google Play Services but these aren't required by GrapheneOS.

google might be doing the same thing, but google doesn't have men with guns forcing you to use google play services

LineageOS without gapps (no microg even) works fine. Very few apps require play services. I think everything from F-Droid works.

You should check out microg lineage builds. Running it on my phone for a few years now without a single google app.

You are allowed to use Google services. There is even an alternative called microG which is compatible with apps requiring Google serivices but it sends "fake" data to Google.

You can use microG which provides a lot of Google Play Service functionality.

You can use microg. It's a Free reimplementation of google play framework, so that apps which depend on it can still function in a de-googled phone. It's imperfect, I admit it, and breaks some apps, but it's still a massive help.

You might want to try Graphene OS. It supports running Google Play services in a sandbox.

Not GP, but I looked into that option. The problem to me seems that most popular apps depend on Google Play Services in some way. So your options are (a) use microG (which seems pretty janky), or (b) install the real Play Services, which puts you back at square one.

Not OP, but check out LineageOS without Play Services.