If it seems that the clash between community decency and the First Amendment is a never-ending battle, that’s because it is.

And it should be.

Free speech – a hallmark of freedom. Decency – the keystone of civil order. Neither should be taken for granted in a self-governing society.

So the deal that’s been struck between the city of Spokane and a string of adult entertainment businesses, as important and hard-won as it was, is just another chapter in the saga, not the last page. Under a consent decree that’s expected to be entered in a couple of weeks, once the last legal formalities are complete, three World Wide Video establishments in the city will voluntarily restrict the amount of their floor space, inventory and sales represented by explicit materials (the dirty stuff).

If they don’t keep their promise, city officials have the authority to take enforcement action, and they have a court order to back them up.

The decree doesn’t go as far as anti-pornography crusaders would like, which is to turn the businesses into pillars of salt, but in the eyes of the Spokane City Council it’s a satisfactory end to five years of legal wrangling. That’s how long the city has been in court trying to enforce a zoning ordinance aimed at keeping stores that traffic in so-called adult fare away from schools, playgrounds, homes, churches, parks and the like.

As assistant city attorney Milt Rowland reminded City Council members several times Monday night, they can’t constitutionally pick on a business because of the content of the materials it sells. They can, however, take action to deal with the secondary effects.

The most strident First Amendment activist would sympathize with parents whose grade-school children have to dodge discarded wrappers from XXX-rated videos as they walk to and from school or the park, or with business owners who can’t attract customers or even employees because they sit next to a pornography outlet. Consequences like those give political bodies a reason to crack down.

But litigation is expensive, time-consuming and uncertain.

It’s not that a big chunk of the public is out defending pornography, it’s the age-old problem of defining it. On the political or artistic continuum ranging from the sublime to the putrid, there are countless gradations in the middle, and neither lawmakers nor courts have developed a clear, workable way to identify the boundary between what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

All of which makes the consent decree that World Wide and the city both have agreed to a practical approach. It’s a voluntary agreement backed by court enforcement. It produces certainty and something like finality. But it applies only to the three establishments that are parties to the deal. It does not apply to a fourth, separately owned sex business, although the city is negotiating with it in hopes of reaching a similar agreement. Nor would it apply to new adult book and video businesses that set up shop in Spokane.

In such cases, absent a voluntary agreement, city officials would return to the zoning ordinance and, possibly, to court.

The lack of a clearcut remedy may frustrate some whose scorn for unseemly commerce overshadows their respect for freedom of expression. Still, the United States has survived as the world’s leading democracy because it honors the values on both sides of the equation and keeps working on getting them in balance. The effort is worth it.