CAIRO: Pop star Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl was playing on speakers set around the dimly lit dance floor. Kholoud Bidak, a 33-year-old lesbian, leant against an old piano, scanning the entrance warily as guests paid $5.70 to get into one of Cairo's increasingly common underground gay parties.

Just months ago, a raid by Egypt's vice police would have been a concern at gatherings such as this.

But on the recent sweltering Thursday night, as men in pastel-coloured, V-neck T-shirts streamed in, a crackdown was the last thing on Ms Bidak's mind. She worried whether a certain woman might walk through the door.

Egypt's gays emerged buoyed from the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February and have turned a handful of public venues into spaces where it's safe for men to dance with men and where women sit on each other's laps.

Activists are also getting together and quietly planning campaigns they hope will enable gays and lesbians to live openly in a country where sexual minorities have long been ostracised.