I just noticed the update of the title.

I propose to close this issue if this is caused by a non-universal version 
of libintl that's installed by macports.

Macports can install universal binaries of its packages (the +universal 
variant), use that if you want to link a universal build of python with 
macports libraries (and if you don't want to link with macports you 
shouldn't add the macports $prefix to the search path of the compiler)