I know this is closed so the comment may not be relevant, but the byte/string issues with email should be sorted out in the code that is in 3.2/3.3 at this point.  That is, it is possible once again to work with binary data, using the correct (new) classes.  If you have issues where things still don't work, please report them.  Note also that email now allows control of the generated linesep characters.  (That, unfortunately, won't help the python2 backport.)