I have been asking kind of the same question recently. I was told no such animal exists.

First, you should have linked to Re^12: Best way to write to a file owned by root?. Secondly, you were NOT told that no such tool exists:

Is there some tool or module already out like that that would allow me safely automate updates to my /etc/hosts file?

I don't know of any.

One person stating lack of knowledge is quite different from non-existence. Automated, remote administration of a bunch of machines should be a common problem. So, some solutions should exist. How secure those solutions are, and how well they scale, are different questions.

Alexander