Thank you for your most eloquent respose in the latest post, and please accept my apologies if I conveyed a sense of having my feathers ruffled earlier.
I am not in favour of equal parenting as you may know, unless the parents agree to those kinds of arrangements - I've argued the subject to death on this forum, once again as you may know.
So any petition you might put forward I wouldn't sign either, although I do not see mine as in conflict with equal parenting, and I do accept that depending upon the definitions used etc. you could create laws covering a rebuttable presumption of contact together with an equal parenting presumption I could support.
Many thanks for your interest once again - I'm finding alot of objections to my petition on the other fathers/parents forums I frequent because forum members feel to specifically mention child abuse in any presumption of contact might create a situation where more false allegations are made.
I hope that is not the case, and I could argue that parents will not falsely accuse one another as easily as they do now, if they knew when the false allegations are refuted or the parent withdraws them, that their actions might be used against them. For example in court it might be said that: "You tried to remove the other parent from your child's life using false allegations - and that action frustrated the rebuttable legal presumption in favour of contact, for a time at least". Added to that I think any parent making false allegations would find it harder to maintain that by doing this they were "acting in their child's best interests" - obviously you would have to be careful using that argument because if the fears of abuse were real then the parent could justifiably argue they were not only acting in their best interests by obstructing contact but also fulfilling their duty to protect the child.
You have forced me to think more deeply about the implications of my petition so that is very helpful especially if I manage to find any supporters and it gets posted on the No. 10 Downing Street website of course.
Graham