There are some things that J2EE has which you would have to build yourself if you wanted them in Perl. However, most of them are of no use to most projects.
I often hear people say that J2EE is an "easier sell" to VCs, yet none of the most successful startups of the past few years have used Java as their primary language. The only I can think of is eBay, and that was a rewrite from C++. Java is definitely the language of choice in huge, slow-moving corporations, but startups often use Python, C, Perl, Lisp, etc.
If people question you about the scalability of Perl, you might mention to them some of the companies that make extensive use of Perl: Amazon, Yahoo, Overture, TicketMaster, CitySearch, IMDB...