Your point that there’s a distinction between direct democracy and constitutional republicanism is well taken.

However, I think it’s a bit hyperbolic to say my “claim of Vermont being a democracy is just as aggravatingly false and misleading as calling Vermont a monarchy.”

Consider that Vermont’s executive, the governor, is popularly elected, as are its legislators (let’s set aside debates over ranked-choice voting, for now). Even the judiciary is indirectly subject to a popular vote with judicial retention, with judges periodically needing approval from the popularly-elected legislature in order to remain on the bench. Consider also Town Meeting Day, during which direct democracy takes place in many municipalities across the state—perhaps its notable that every municipality in Vermont (except for the unincorporated gores) was created by an act of the popularly elected legislature.

Apropos of the subject at hand, same-sex marriage, it’s worth glossing over the history of Vermont’s path to marriage equality. First there was a lawsuit that made it to the Vermont Supreme Court, which held that the Legislature had to come up with a scheme to guarantee the same rights to same-sex couples as cis-heterosexual couples. The General Assembly then passed and the governor signed the law allowing for civil unions, which accorded a version of marriage equality with regard to the legal rights and responsibilities that attend civil marriage (It’s still not full equality if you can’t call such unions “marriages” though).

It’s late and I’m too lazy to check Wikipedia or Google, but if I’m recalling correctly, Vermont may have been the first state to legislatively enact legal rights for same-sex couples. It’s an important distinction from states that initially based marriage equality solely on high court decisions (or the U.S. as a whole, for that matter), because the fact that our laws regarding equal rights for same-sex couples were brought about legislatively speaks on some level to popular will; it’s a more “democratic” way to do things than merely having a panel of learned jurists enjoin discrimination against same-sex couples.

This is a big stretch, but some time after the passage of the civil union laws, Vermont might have been the first state to legislatively recognize same-sex marriages, outright, and with many fewer political consequences for legislators who voted for it than for certain legislators who did not get re-elected after they voted to pass the civil union law. I might be totally wrong about that, so please fact-check me. I’m too lazy to look it up at the moment.

Again, where legislators theoretically effect the will of the majority of their constituencies, I think it’s fair to characterize that as “democratic.” It’s hardly monarchical, at any rate. Marriage equality in Vermont did not happen by royal or even executive fiat. Neither was it solely the product of a court decision—it took acts from a democratically-elected legislature.

You can get aggravated and split hairs about whether Vermont is a “democracy” or a “constitutional republic” (couldn’t that be characterized as a kind of democracy?), but that misses the point: Vermonters wanted same-sex couples to enjoy the same rights as cis-het couples, and had people representing them who made it happen.