I want to add it to a separate page that is not part of the buddypress piece. Basically a static page with a post box. I thought i may be able to use some kind of buddypress function to call the post box instead of accessing the DB directly with my own code.
I had this problem too and it was very frustrating. The main pubDate was fine as it was just the last updated time, but the pubDate for each post was not in the correct format. I found a fix for this. It’s a hack to the buddypress code so I’ll give you all of the standard “enter at your own risk” warnings but at least until the buddypress team fixes this, this should solve your problem.
edit the following file and add the following lines (make sure you comment out the line I mention as well):