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In my opinion, the affront to democracy was the decision to hold a simple yes/no referendum in the first place, with no clearly defined plan for what leaving actually meant*. Would you decide to emigrate without knowing whether you were emigrating to Spain or Russia?

That decision was, again in my opinion, solely as a result of David Cameron wanting to appease the right wing of his own party and to appeal to UKIP voters. The view was presumably that anything other than simple yes/no would split the leave vote and so be a landslide for remaining in the EU. I genuinely believe that Cameron and others felt remain would still clearly win anyway, hence they agreed to the simple in/out question.

I also see it as an affront to democracy in that it was presumably seen as too complicated to ask 2 questions:
(1) do you want to leave?
(2) if the UK does leave the EU, what relationship with the EU would you prefer?

Obviously the answers to question 2 are more complicated than a simple yes/no, but that's kind of the point. Nobody can actually say with any precision what the 52% (of people who voted) actually wanted, other than to leave the EU.

*For what it's worth, I felt the same about the arguments prior to the Scottish Independence referendum, though to be fair in hindsight the level of uncertainty there was then seems an order of magnitude lower in comparison to Brexit. Given that whether Scotland could remain in the EU was one of the big question marks, and given that Scotland clearly voted to remain in both referendums, wouldn't it be democratic to allow Scotland another referendum? I've not heard much about respecting the will of the Scottish people though...