iThe emacsforosx binaries work well and are fine if you don't want to actually compile fro source.
BTW I don't think you should be overly concerned about homebrew not using sudo. While there are issues with homebrew on multi-use systems, the way it works without sudo is really no different to downloading the source and building it in your home directory and running it from there. Yes, it does store the software in /usr/local, but it is not installing it as root/system, but as your user (one reason it doesn't work well with multi-user systems). If you really want, you can install it within your home directory (although this can cause some problems with some recipes where the source expects to be installed in /usr/local and you will need to handle linking to bin dirs yourself). Main point is, homebrew isn't doing dangerous things with suid etc in order to avoid sudo and your not installing something which has dangerous escalated privileges etc. There are all the standard risks of installing software from the 'net', but these are no different whether you use sudo or not.