Okay, my latest guess is that this is really a libqt problem.

if you look a the sources in the x11/qt3-libs/ package, specifically
in src/network/qdns.cpp, you find a bunch of code that decides whether
to use _res based on a preproc define named Q_MODERN_RES_API.

Early in the file, this is set via:

#if defined(__GLIBC__) && ((__GLIBC__ > 2) || ((__GLIBC__ == 2) && (__GLIBC_MINOR__ >= 3)))
#define Q_MODERN_RES_API
#else
#endif

This is not a good idea.

Unfortunately, I don't speak configure well enough to fix it
correctly, nor do I know how to do the test for a modern resolver.

Perry