HR styling with CSS

I been working on about the 400th redesign of my website. Hopefully I'll actually get this one live. Any how I decided to try and use the hr tag before and after my main body of content. Firstly in order to hang curvy corners from and secondly so it would degrade in a good manner, so that it still has a meaning when CSS is switched off.

This worked beautifully in Firefox, but some issues with Internet Explorer, since it seems to insist on a margin and border regardless of the CSS. Much as I'd like to ignore IE I can't so I'll have to find a solution or a tag better suited for the purpose.

More searchingand I find I am not alone and that this chap hasn't found a work around either, which is a shame.

Styling HR

Seems like I'll have to resort to divs again :( Bummer. Also IE has an issue with empty div heights so I needed to put comments in to get the height small enough.