You're going to want to use Template Toolkit instead of HTML::Template if you're tailoring display elements based on boolean values. You can pass a $config object to TT and then query it within your template. You have to pass discrete values to H::T and that gets really annoying to code up, both in Perl and in templates.
In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is. :-)
"What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?"