any accredited registrar can submit proposals for new TLD's - they get stacks of them every year and ICAAN has to review them. that doesn't mean it has any other meaning as people in this industry seem to think it does. just because he resubmitted a petition doesn't mean ICAAN cares or supports xxx. everyone is just following protocol. if they do approve it... why shouldn't they? there is no good argument why there shouldn't be .xxx but we just have to have .mobi or .asia .travel .name .museum .jobs or any other useless tld.
besides, fuck him. it costs like 250-300K to go through this process. hopefully he will do it every year and get shot down every year.
no matter what, you obviously can't force owners of every tld (sex.com, sex.org, sex.net, sex.nu or whatever) to move 50-100 adult sites to the one .xxx version of that domain (
see tld list here).
furthermore, the federal government is never going to legitimize porn by making that a mandatory for US operators.... and clearly, they can't force other countries to do so and even the very idea assumes they somehow got around the issue of multiple owners of the name on different tlds - which no one has ever explained how that is possible other than by simply creating an illegal law and ignoring peoples rights which would get tied up in court and shot down anyway.