Hi Roberto,
I was no longer on the Board when .xxx was finally delegated, but remember well the discussions when it was first presented to the Board, and rejected. My position of denying delegation was based exclusively on the consideration that the proposers failed to fulfil one of the necessary requirements of an sTLD, that is the consensus of the community it aimed at serving.
Thanks for the refresh. While I was never quite the fan of community TLDs -- a concept that has not aged well -- I appreciate the context you offer. My personal opinion, having followed things only from the distance after my
departure from the Board, is that the delegation was done under pressure to avoid potential lawsuits - again not related to “content”.
In retrospect, I think you are correct. And if I recall right, that potential lawsuit was from ICM suing ICANN for arbitrarily subjecting it to greater scrutiny than other applicants. I wonder what reasons they would have argued would have caused the special treatment ... but we'll never know. 😉 Cheers, - Evan