Darlene,
(I really don't have a firm opinion on this) I'm just harkening back to the .xxx debate. In my mind, it was a good example of ICANN stepping outside of its role and taking part in a debate that was completely outside of its mandate. IMHO, if the .xxx people had all of their ducks in a row as per ICANN's rules, they should have been able to register that domain name. Instead there was this huge issue about morality (which is totally outside of ICANN's mandate). So, how far is this to be taken?
To set the record straight, I did vote against the delegation of the TLD, but not at all because of moral issues. When the story begun, I was still ALAC Liaison. Since I had no precise mandate to present a specific position, I expressed my own opinion in the Board discussion, which was that in the case of a sponsored TLD one of the key element was the consensus of the sponsored community. For a number of reasons, this was not the case for triple-x. Just consider simply the fact that most sites with adult content would not go to a specific TLD, exactly to avoid ghettization, and easy filtering. They want to reach the widest possible audience, and therefore would not accept being in an easily identifiable corner. This was my reason since the beginning. Coherently with this position, expressed over the many months during which this saga continued, I cast my vote against it when time came, as in the meantime I have become a voting director. This said, I agree completely with you that the matter got politicized, and ICANN took the risk to act outside of its mandate. But the first move in this direction was not at all the consideration of moral opportunity, but the campaign promoted in favour of triple-x, with the (in my opinion bogus) consideration that delegation was necessary in order to promote free speech. I don't want to now reopen the debate of free speech vs. TLDs, and repeat things I have stated so many times, but would like only to note that the debate was derailed from the simple compliance to the charter to a broader (out-of-ICANN-scope) issue not by the opponents to the TLD for (in my opinion bogus) moral reasons, as they came into the picture only later, but by the folks who favoured the TLD for political reasons, who started campaigning from day one. Best regards, Roberto