OK thanks for the reply! I stumbled on the following after posting, once I tried a slightly more intelligent google search. In case it helps anyone else... It's regarding the same issue I've asked about with a bit more info.
Unfortunately my idea to set a sticky bit would NOT be advisable for this because judging by my "ps -ef" output it's actually java that binds to the port, not logstash directly; meaning if one were to set a sticky bit for java, ANY java applet/servlet could bind to any port it wanted. FYI