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I used the literal for a while, thinking the passthrough would work great but it didn't work the way I needed it to. But it's great for "cheating" as you say.
I switched to an xml control and wrote css to do what I needed for display purposes.
Then it boils down to this:
Me.xml_Display_Config_Settings_As_HTML.DocumentContent = sXML_as_HTML
Me.xml_Display_Config_Settings_As_HTML.TransformSource = "~/App_Themes/cfgDisplay.xsl"
Me.xml_Display_Config_Settings_As_HTML.DataBind()
ViewState.Add("xml_Display_Config_Settings_As_HTML", xml_Display_Config_Settings_As_HTML.DocumentContent)