By Cherie Grzech and Steve Brown

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WOODBURY, Minn. — A Minnesota teen-ager told he couldn't wear a sweatshirt with the words "Straight Pride" on it because it was offensive to some students at a public high school has sued the school district in federal court claiming his free speech rights were violated.

Elliott Chambers, a 16-year-old student at Woodbury High School outside St. Paul, says he was called into the school principal's office in January and told the shirt was not allowed in school because it was offensive to gay, lesbian and bisexual students.

The sweatshirt carried the trademarked logo "Straight Pride" on the front, and the stick-figure symbols of a man and woman holding hands on the back.

"A student actually approached me and she said she was offended by my shirt and some of her friends were offended by the shirt and she didn't want me to wear it anymore," Chambers told Fox News. "She said if I continued to wear it, she would go to the principal and he would deal with me."

The principal told Chambers he couldn't wear the shirt "because of the recent racial violence at our school, and that it might incite straight-versus-homosexual violence," he recalled.

Officials at the school district have declined to comment on the case other than to say principal Dana Babbitt, a co-defendant in the case, was trying to keep his school safe.

In wearing the shirt, Chambers said he did not intend to insult anyone. "It's not meant to bash gays or anything like that at all," he said. "It's just a simple shirt that says 'Hey...I have pride in being straight.'"

But others at the school interpreted it differently.

Paula Borochoff, a special education teacher, told Fox News that the shirt is a form of harassment that should be banned. The language makes gay or lesbian students, or those with gay or lesbian family members, uncomfortable, she said.

"It's just like kids can't wear racially unethical things or they can't come to school with sweatshirts that advertise beer," Borochoff said. "I think that in order to make the school comfortable for everybody, school principals have an obligation to ban things like that that are hurtful to other people."

Before enlisting the help of the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, a Christian group that has joined the lawsuit, the Chambers, who are themselves Christian, visited the principal to express their concern about what they said was a double-standard.

The school attempts to foster an atmosphere of tolerance by displaying inverted pink triangles around designated "safe" areas of the school. The "safe" areas are set aside for student/teacher discussion and counseling regarding homosexuality and other non-traditional relationships.

Elliott's mother, Lana Chambers, said she was concerned that moral lessons being taught at home (the Chambers oppose homosexual acts on Christian principle) were being undermined in school.

"It upsets me that the school system is destroying what I'm trying to build at home," she told Fox News. "Is it too much to ask that they just focus on what's important and let the moral education be done in the home where it belongs."

When she raised her concerns, Lana Chambers said, principal Babbitt called her "homophobic."

Stephen M. Crampton, Chief Counsel for the American Family Center, called the situation "a case of classic viewpoint discrimination.

"The school has chosen to openly embrace homosexuality and bisexuality, and it does not welcome dissenting points of view," he said.