Is this OK, or am I a XHTML-Terrorist

Working on converting a large content managment driven site to Valid XHTML and is trying to keep all Editorial functions as they are.

I'm parsing text from a textarea. I start by defining a paragraph and parse two or more newlines to end it and create a new paragraph. The Editors are allowed to put a picture with caption, a quote block, a fact box etc. wherever they want in the body text (and have been doing so in tens of thousands of articles that I have to keep).

Nesting a <div> inside a <p> ... </p> is not valid and I cant't force the image, qoute, factbox... to be placed outside the paragraph. The only easy solution I want to use is to put the elemts inside a inline-element such as a span, making it valid, but redefine the span to display: block;

<style type="text/css">
.float {
display: block;
float: right;
}
</style>

<p>
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing
elit. Etiam vitae sapien. Quisque dictum. Nunc orci
<span class="float"><img src="lorem.jpg" width="100" height="150" border="0" alt="alttext" />
<br />Caption
</span>
lacus, rutrum eu, elementum quis, rhoncus iaculis, risus.
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus
et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
</p>


Is fooling the validator like this OK? Or am I terrorising the quest for a valid marked-up internet! I think it's for a good cause. The Image in this example is inline, inside a pargraph where it actually belongs if that's where the Editor put it. The blockifying done with CSS is just for layout purposes!