taking another stab at this.

Author: ikirudennis

textile/core.py

@@ -874,7 +874,7 @@ def _casesdefault(c, pop, popped, url_chars, counts, pre):
         url = self.shelveURL(self.encode_url(urlunsplit(uri_parts)))
         attributes = parse_attributes(atts)
         if title:
-            title = title.encode('utf8')
+            title = six.text_type(title)
             attributes['title'] = title
         attributes['href'] = url
         if self.rel:

textile/utils.py

@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ def generate_tag(tag, content, attributes=None):
     enc = 'unicode'
     if six.PY2:
         enc = 'UTF-8'
-        attributes = OrderedDict((k, v.decode('utf8')) for k, v in attributes.items())
+    attributes = OrderedDict((k, six.text_type(v)) for k, v in attributes.items())
     if not tag:
         return content
     element = ElementTree.Element(tag, attrib=attributes)
@@ -64,7 +64,8 @@ def generate_tag(tag, content, attributes=None):
     try:
         element_tag = ElementTree.tostringlist(element, encoding=enc,
                 method='html')
-        element_tag = [v.decode('utf8') for v in element_tag]
+        if six.PY2:
+            element_tag = [v.decode('utf8') for v in element_tag]
         element_tag.insert(len(element_tag) - 1, content)
         element_text = ''.join(element_tag)
     except AttributeError: