ekiga depends on esound when USE="gnome" is enabled. I use GNOME but I don't use ESounD. When I USE="-esd" I wan't any dependency on ESD disabled rather than having to put it into /etc/portage/package.provided or disabling GNOME support for ekiga. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
if you'd read configure.in, you'd see it's not possible to do what you are proposing. ekiga-3 is probably esd free so we can just sit and wait for it.