Comment 6 for bug 434411

Problem solved, I guess. I mean, it's still a mystery how this could have happened, but I had a pyOpenSSL egg installed that was causing the problem... and it masked the py25-openssl package that I subsequently installed with macports. Everything started working once I had removed the original egg. My strong suspicion is that it was built with a different Python2.5, with a UCS4 setting.

My current Python says:
{{{
$ python -c "import sys;print(sys.maxunicode<66000)and'UCS2'or'UCS4'"
UCS2
}}}

[http://www.egenix.com/products/python/pyOpenSSL/ This page] put me onto that possibility.