I solved it, no help from the peanut gallery.
The solution for me was to comment out the second bit of code in the -qt.pro file related to UPNP. Basically even if I did "qmake "USE_UPNP=-" it would return "Building without UPNP" and then just under it "Building with UPNP." Following that, I realized that the if ==/else== is seemingly wrongly syntaxed in the .pro file. I changed that section in the .pro file to look like this:
# qmake "USE_UPNP=-" (not supported)
contains(USE_UPNP, -) {
message(Building without UPNP support)
}
and re-ran qmake/make and voila. Yes, this is a dirty way to do it. Yes, my -qt has no UPNP support (no, I don't care). I have no formal C/C++ training so this is how I learn, trial and error.